No man is an iland

All your calls-to-action are happily driving sales, searches, downloads, donations, phone calls or Facebook love.

But not the unsubscribe link.

No indeed.

This sniveling wretch spends his days sucking subscribers out of your database. (And his nights cavorting recklessly with dental appointments and taxes down the “Needed but not Nice” gin and whisky joint.)

As we’ll see, however, unsubscribes are not all bad. And there are good ways and bad ways to manage them.

Make it difficult?

One school of thought says the best way to keep people on your list is to make it as difficult as possible for them to get off it.

Supporters of this approach apply various techniques.

There’s the Al Capone fear-based option:

The James Joyce confuse-them-with-language tactic:

The King Eurystheus method, involving a few Herculean unsubscribe tasks:

The Monty Python technique:

And finally, the Harry Potter “cloak of invisibility” unsubscribe link:

The problem with any “make it difficult” approach is they can easily become illegal. Under US Federal law, for example, the unsubscribe process is subject to the following rules:

“Neither a sender nor any person acting on behalf of a sender may require that any recipient pay any fee, provide any information other than the recipient’s electronic mail address and opt-out preferences, or take any other steps except sending a reply electronic mail message or visiting a single Internet Web page”

More importantly, making unsubscribes difficult treats the symptom, not the problem. When you refuse to acknowledge a need, it doesn’t go away.

If you’re lucky, your next emails do indeed pique the interest of the would be ex-subscriber and they return to the fold of satisfied list members.

Much more likely, the next emails simply add to their frustration and drive them to unsubscribe using other means (if they haven’t already). For example:

• Setting up a filter to automatically delete your messages (you pay to send email that is never opened or clicked)

• Setting up a filter to send your messages to a folder that’s never read (ditto)

• Marking your email as spam (ditto, plus it hurts your sender reputation)

As a result, I sit in the other school of thought, which is to make the unsubscribe process painless for the user and helpful for the marketer.

You first need to evaluate why people unsubscribe…

The three kinds of unsubscribers

There are three main groups of would-be unsubscribers: the unavoidables, the switchers and the dissatisfied.

Even the best emails in the world will get unavoidable unsubscribes.

People change interests, jobs, locations and needs. My children grew up, I bought a house, I left the industry: I no longer need your baby clothes promotions, real estate alerts or “Wiring World” newsletter.

Such unsubscribes are a natural part of any list.

Another group aren’t actually unsubscribing from your brand or organization as a whole, or even from your emails.

The switchers simply want to change their email address, take a break (e.g. while on an extended vacation) or get your messages through another channel of communication.

The third group – the dissatisfied – have a fundamental interest in you or what your emails could contain, but your actual messages are not doing the job for them.

Commonly this is because they find your emails are not targeted, relevant or valuable enough, they simply come too often or they don’t display properly on whatever device is used to read them.

Understanding the needs and characteristics of all these groups leads automatically to insights into what a good unsubscribe process looks like.

1. Surprise! Make it easy to find and use the unsubscribe link in each email.

Typically, users will expect an appropriate link in the footer of an email. Make it visible (no sneaky use of light grey-on-white text, avoid images that might be blocked) and use words that people will understand. As I’ve written before:

“What’s intuitive and obvious to the people who design emails and list management processes isn’t intuitive and obvious to those who just read them and use them.”

I’m not even sure every email user knows what the word “unsubscribe” means.

The concept of usability and clarity carries through to the subsequent landing page and the actual unsubscribe form.

Is it blindingly obvious what you have to fill in, check, uncheck or click to unsubscribe?

Is the action then confirmed clearly on the page displayed after they submit the form? If people are left in doubt that their address really was taken off the list, they might resort to the alternatives (see above).

Particularly, if people are mildly unhappy about your emails before they unsubscribe, they can become spitting balls of demonic vindictiveness if they get one after they unsubscribed. Which is why the process needs to work and delays in processing the request are best avoided.

The law may allow a number of days to suppress an address from future emails, but that doesn’t interest (ex-)subscribers. They assume an instant reaction. If a delay is inevitable for purely technical reasons, it needs to be communicated clearly.

2. Monitor replies

However easy it is to unsubscribe using the appropriate link, some people will still prefer to simply hit the reply button and ask to be taken off your list. This is another compelling reason to monitor replies to your campaigns.

If manual processing is not practical, many email marketing services have automatic reply monitoring that can flag incoming emails for appropriate review based on the content.

3. Reconsider the one-click unsubscribe

The one-click solution is where a click on an email’s unsubscribe link automatically unsubscribes the recipient without them needing to take any further action. This has the advantage of simplicity and is largely failsafe.

The downside is that people can click experimentally or accidentally and find themselves off a list they never wanted to leave.

You also have no chance to engage and manage the subscriber on the unsubscribe landing page.

4. Consider an additional unsubscribe link at the top of the email

Adding a second unsubscribe link to the top of an email was an issue I first examined three years ago. Some senders have found it reduces spam reports significantly:

“We have found that customers who place the unsubscribe link at the top of the email and make it very prominent and easy to see, often reduce their spam complaints by 75%”
Source: StreamSend

“I have personally been associated with numbers ranging from 15%-45% reduction of spam complaints”
Source: Andrew Kordek

“We have had few clients who were seeing high complaint rates try this, and the simple act of moving their opt-out link to the pre-header area of their email significantly cut down on their complaint rates.”
Source: WhatCounts

Others suggest it only makes sense in specific circumstances. It does, after all, take up valuable space in a key area of your email. It may also affect people’s perception of messages.

5. Pre-fill forms on the landing page with the recipient’s email address, or display that address on the unsubscribe page

This saves the user time and ensures the right address gets unsubscribed. Your email marketing service or software should support this feature.

If you can’t do this, it can help to list the recipient’s subscribed email address somewhere in the email: with automatic forwarding, email aliases, etc., the email account subscribed to a list isn’t necessarily the account where the email is actually read.

Listing the subscribed address in the body of the email helps subscribers find the “right” email address quickly. It also helps you unsubscribe the correct address when people forward the email and ask to be taken off the list.

6. Give users the option to change address or pause their subscription

These kind of subscription management options are often included on their own web page or as part of a preference center. Regardless of how the changes work in practice, subscribers at least need to know how to access the feature.

Consider adding appropriate links and copy to the email footer. If there are space constraints, then mention the option on the unsubscribe page.

7. Give users the option to change frequency, format, channel and/or content preferences

If the functionality is available, then the unsubscribe landing page can present people with alternatives to unsubscribing that address their reasons for doing so. For example:

• Allow people to “opt-down” to less frequent mails. Discussion lists, for example, typically allow subscribers to choose between receiving each email separately or collated within a daily digest.

• Allow people to switch to a text-only or mobile-friendly version of your email (if this happens a lot, the underlying problem might be design issues with your HTML email)

• Allow people to switch to another list or refine content preferences

Alternatively, point them at other ways they might keep in touch with your promotions or content, like through your blog feed, Twitter account, Facebook page, Google+ page, SMS, etc.

8. Collect feedback

Another option is to include a form field or drop-down menu where subscribers can tell you why they no longer want to get your emails.

This feedback can highlight problems (like design issues) previously unknown to you. Frankly, it’s also quite reassuring to learn that many people are unsubscribing through no fault of yours.

9. Monitor unsubscribe patterns

Finally, while the unsubscribe rate has never been a great measure of email marketing success, unexpected spikes are a definite warning signal. Such spikes can come about through, for example:

• Inappropriate content
• Inappropriate tone
• Inappropriate expectations among new subscribers (perhaps you just added a new source of addresses)
• Design problems

Any kind of significant change to your emails can prompt people to unsubscribe. But this is not necessarily a bad thing. Ten years ago I wrote:

“If you lose 10% of your readership by changing your newsletter, but your impact and influence on the remaining 90% has improved tremendously, then the loss is a welcome one.”

OK…any unsubscribe tips yourself? Have you seen any good unsubscribe pages? (After reading through my post, mine needs some serious work!)

Find related articles:

• Channel: Dealing with unsubscribes