When you provide your details for a newsletter, blog or competition you are opening your inbox to email promotion. That’s a given.
You may have been genuinely interested in the content. You may have just wanted that free ebook. But inevitably, something changes and you don’t want those emails anymore… so you look to unsubscribe.
As the owner of an email marketing list unsubscribes happen. It’s part of the natural churn and you can’t take it personally.
What you can do is influence your last impression on a subscriber: Your unsubscribe process.
Rather than appearing uncaring, terse or belligerent, you want this last impression to be positive.
Why? They’re going anyway, right? Well, maybe not. Maybe they have just need fewer emails but they’d still champion your business to their friends and colleagues.
The danger of having a cumbersome unsubscribe process is that you can turn a slightly disinterested customer into a really aggravated customer.
That’s what happened to me when I decided to unsubscribe from a Salesforce sequence I was receiving. At the end of the email, I was given two options. I could:
OPT1: Email a specific address (that was different from the sender’s email address) with the word REMOVE.
OR
OPT2: Click a link in the original email to unsubscribe.
Now I thought option 2 looked like the easiest so I clicked. Oh, how wrong I was because then I had to:
1. Confirm my email address on a webpage
2. Wait until I received a confirmation email so I could click another link
3. That link took me to a webpage where I had to confirm email address Again
4. Then I had to deselect preferences to unsubscribe
5. Wait until I received a confirmation email so I could click another link to confirm
5 steps to unsubscribe! I was pretty very pissed off by the time I finished the whole process. Rather than being a simple farewell I was left fuming!
Now, this is not a standard unsubscribe process (I have to believe it’s a mistake) but I will NEVER subscribe to anything by Salesforce again.
The lesson?
Don’t cling to your subscribers, begging them not to leave.
Just. Let. Them. Go.
You often won’t have a say in what the unsubscribe process looks like unless you’ve designed your own email marketing tool. But the hoops your email marketing tool makes subscribers jump through to unsubscribe should be a factor in which tool you use.
So, what should your unsubscribe process look like?
- Make your unsubscribe links easy to find.
- Make your unsubscribe process easy. Like, one-click easy. Click to unsubscribe and you’re unsubscribed.
- Don’t ask for the email address to be confirmed. You already know it.
- Action unsubscribe requests immediately. Not in 5 working days. Now.
- Ask them why they are going but make it a short list of clickable options.
- Thank them and tell them you’re sorry to see them go. It might sound cheesy but it’s a little courtesy that will go a long way.
Okay. So that’s my rant over. Have you had any unsubscribe horrors stories? Go one get it off your chest.
Belinda
6 Responses
I had a similar experience to yours a few months ago. Last year I booked a hire car for my UK trip from a very well known car rental firm, and I must have inadvertently left the “sign up for our promotions” box ticked. After months of regularly getting irrelevant emails I finally found a minute to unsubscribe. The link in the email simply took you to their home page where there was no obvious way to unsubscribe. I tweeted about it and received a useless reply from the company. It certainly did harm their brand, I’ll think twice before I use them again even if they are the best priced option!
Oh Bridie that is exactly the worst case scenario I’m talking about and I feel your pain!
Every touch point is an opportunity to engage, delight and retain – even on the way out. Actually especially on the way out because that just might be the moment you turn them around!
Great article Belinda! I have to say that I am so OVER subscribing to lists and on a rampage of opting out rather than in!
Thanks Nicole! I also go through a clean out every now and then and I think it’s just good housekeeping. Some of the emails I recently unsubscribed too were actually very good content but I didn’t read them often enough so they were just filling up my inbox. You have to be tough sometimes! It’s so much easier to unsubscribe from companies that just send promotional guff all the time isn’t it?
Some years ago I wanted to unsubscribe from a service that was bombarding me daily with material that became tiresome. While there was no functional ‘unsubscribe’ facility, their system did allow me to update the subscription email address. Solution – replace my email address with theirs. I never heard from them again.
James, that is BRILLIANT!
I’m definitely using that trick for emails I can’t unsubscribe from. And there are a still a few. Considering how many free and relatively sophisticated, email marketing tools are out there – there’s no excuse!