The undervalued unsubscribe process

Another example of trust at work in email marketing is the process used by subscribers to get off your list.

If they don't trust the mechanism, then they use other ways to avoid your emails. Chief among these is the dreaded spam report.

That's one of the reasons the folk at Lyris/EmailLabs took a long, hard look at unsubscribe practices earlier this year. The results make valuable reading and include many recommended best practices.

You can get more insight from the study's author (Stefan Pollard) in articles at DMNews and Direct.

Here's my take:

Current unsubscribe practices are often not a deliberate choice, but enforced by whatever system, service or software you're using. So don't feel bad if you're not meeting every best practice recommended.

As long as you have a clear and simple unsubscribe mechanism that is easy for subscribers to find, works and confirms the address removal...then you have the basics in place.

In terms of developing or using new unsubscribe mechanisms, then it's about understanding what the "unsubscriber" is really trying to achieve and helping them do that.

When someone is thinking about unsubscribing, they could actually be thinking about a variety of different things. For example...

I never want any email ever again from this sender
I wish they wouldn't send me email on this topic
I would like to change my email address
I wish they'd send these emails less often
I wish they'd send me emails on other topics
What am I actually signed-up for?

When you think about it this way, the value of a subscriber preference center becomes clear. A preference center is a web page where the subscriber can change their subscription details. And many of these changes don't involve removing themselves completely from your email marketing program.

Instead of unsubscribing, for example, they can choose to get monthly (rather than weekly) emails.

As such preference centers grow in popularity, so they become more expected by subscribers. And sound the death knell for one-click unsubscribe mechanisms.

If people assume they can reach such centers -- to see more information or a range of subscription management choices -- by clicking on an unsubscribe link, then they are far more likely to click on such links.

If that click then unsubscribes them automatically, chances are you're losing a subscriber who had no intention at all of actually removing their address from your list.

So even if you don't have the capability to operate a preference center, at least make the unsubscribe process a two-step one. One click takes them to a web page where they can then confirm (or not) the actual removal of their address.

(The two-step approach is also something recommended by Stefan.)

More on managing unsubscribes | Tags: email marketing, list management, subscriber management, unsubscribes

Permalink | December 13, 2007 | 0 comment(s)
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