Let them go!
One of the less glorious beliefs still pervading some parts of the Internet marketing world is that it makes sense to make it difficult for people to remove their names from your email address list. Let's use today's article to clear that one up.
First, imagine yourself watching a movie in a theater. The trailer looked pretty interesting, but after an hour, it's clear that this just isn't your thing. So come the handy halftime interval, you decide to leave and go home. After all, you have better things to do.
Your first problem is that it takes you several minutes to find the exit; it's hidden away around the back. Slightly irritating, but never mind, at least you've found it now. Through you go, and...hey, wait a minute...you find yourself back where you started, with the film about to restart.
Must have taken a wrong turn, so let's try the exit again. Nope, still keeps taking you back to the movie. So you try another door. That just leads to a dead end. Back to the movie. Heck, this is getting irritating! You try asking the attendant, but he just points you to the exit door. And that takes you back to the movie again...
Are you going to come away with a positive recollection of that movie theater? Will you be praising it to your friends? I don't think so.
It's the same with mailing lists. Make it hard for people to get off them, and you do your business nothing but harm.
The main benefit to email is your ability to enter a closer relationship with your prospects, visitors and customers. Making life difficult for people is not normally a cornerstone of a good relationship. But quite apart from that, let's see what happens when you do make it difficult to unsubscribe.
Well, if the reader does jump through enough hurdles to actually get off your list, you now have an ex-subscriber whose parting memory of your newsletter is a negative one.
The result? They're now less likely to resubscribe later (maybe they're just taking a vacation break from email or changing their email address), and far more likely to carry a negative attitude into discussions they may have with others about your list and business.
What about those you manage to keep subscribed, because you make it too hard to unsubscribe? Well, now you're paying good money to send an email to someone who doesn't want it and probably isn't reading it anymore.
If you're lucky, they'll just ignore the mails. If you're unlucky, they'll be sending abusive messages to your email address, screaming "spam" and telling friends, colleagues, online forums, discussion lists and others about your administrative inadequacies.
But wait, don't these "unwilling" subscribers still have value if you're selling advertising in your list, on a per-subscriber (CPM) basis? Not really.
Most advertisers want to see measurable results (clicks, action, whatever). Your unwilling subscribers won't be reading your mails or clicking on advertisements. So the results will be lower than those of your competitors with sound unsubscribe practices. Your advertisers may complain. Maybe they'll want their money back. Your rates and reputation will be affected.
Successful email marketing is based on valuing and respecting your subscribers. Part of the deal when you get permission to email someone is that they can rescind that permission quickly and easily, any time they like.
This isn't just about letting people unsubscribe, which should be a given and is a basic tenet of permission-based marketing. It's about making it as easy as possible. And whatever unsubscribe method you do offer, make sure you also provide a catch-all contact address regularly monitored by a human - one people can use if they run into difficulty.
When people want to get off your address list, leave them with a positive memory, not a negative one.
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