Elegant ways to avoid unsubscribes
Latest posts | Feed | By Mark Brownlow on April 27, 2007
Karen J. Bannan identifies four problems leading people to leave your list. Then invites a couple of experts to suggest appropriate solutions. One problem not mentioned is probably the commonest one: you're sending crap (excuse my French).
At an email marketing workshop yesterday, Nikolaus von Graeve suggested an excellent and elegant solution for managing opt-outs. Instead of providing a standard opt-out link with each email, you could offer two opt-out links. A standard universal one and one that lets the recipient opt-out just from "these kind of emails."
I've seen this used in a simple form by media sites sending both editorial content from the site itself and promotional content on behalf of advertisers. When you sign-up you get both types of email, but you can later opt-out of the promotions while staying on the editorial newsletter list.
Nik suggests taking that a step further and allowing selective unsubscribes for your targeted content.
Say you send emails on ladies fashions, mens fashions and kids fashions. Men getting an email on blouses and stockings could then click on a "don't send me any more mails on this topic" link, rather than on the universal "unsubscribe" link. You've rescued a subscriber and also ensured future emails to that subscriber are better targeted.
In theory, such cases of misplaced content should never occur. If you have a perfect targeting system, preference center and/or customer information. But assuming that isn't the case, the two unsubscribe options then has all sorts of benefits:
1. It avoids the "all or nothing" syndrome of email marketing communications with a customer or prospect. Many people opt-out of your list, even though they'd actually quite like to keep getting some of your emails. But unsubscribing to everything is the only way to stop getting the ones they don't want.
2. Preference centers or sign-up forms are great for getting new subscribers to pre-select their content interests. But after they've signed up, subscribers rarely bother to visit and update their preferences. This lets them "manage" these content preferences without clicking on mundane and uninviting account management links.
3. Your clever segmentation can get it wrong (interests change, automated segmentation and trigger rules are never perfect). This lets the user correct your targeting with minimal effort.
Any thoughts?
More on unsubscribes or targeting | Tags: email marketing, list maintenance, targeting, segmentation, list building
At an email marketing workshop yesterday, Nikolaus von Graeve suggested an excellent and elegant solution for managing opt-outs. Instead of providing a standard opt-out link with each email, you could offer two opt-out links. A standard universal one and one that lets the recipient opt-out just from "these kind of emails."
I've seen this used in a simple form by media sites sending both editorial content from the site itself and promotional content on behalf of advertisers. When you sign-up you get both types of email, but you can later opt-out of the promotions while staying on the editorial newsletter list.
Nik suggests taking that a step further and allowing selective unsubscribes for your targeted content.
Say you send emails on ladies fashions, mens fashions and kids fashions. Men getting an email on blouses and stockings could then click on a "don't send me any more mails on this topic" link, rather than on the universal "unsubscribe" link. You've rescued a subscriber and also ensured future emails to that subscriber are better targeted.
In theory, such cases of misplaced content should never occur. If you have a perfect targeting system, preference center and/or customer information. But assuming that isn't the case, the two unsubscribe options then has all sorts of benefits:
1. It avoids the "all or nothing" syndrome of email marketing communications with a customer or prospect. Many people opt-out of your list, even though they'd actually quite like to keep getting some of your emails. But unsubscribing to everything is the only way to stop getting the ones they don't want.
2. Preference centers or sign-up forms are great for getting new subscribers to pre-select their content interests. But after they've signed up, subscribers rarely bother to visit and update their preferences. This lets them "manage" these content preferences without clicking on mundane and uninviting account management links.
3. Your clever segmentation can get it wrong (interests change, automated segmentation and trigger rules are never perfect). This lets the user correct your targeting with minimal effort.
Any thoughts?
More on unsubscribes or targeting | Tags: email marketing, list maintenance, targeting, segmentation, list building
[This post brought to you by Campaigner Email Marketing]
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