Optimize the Opt-out
Do you let your subscribers go too easily? Do you offer them alternatives when they attempt to opt-out? Have you considered how you might be able to save the subscriber and prevent an opt-out from taking place? Although you cannot make the unsubscribe process difficult, following these tips might help you gain value from the opt-out process.
- Clearly indicate how to unsubscribe. Just because a customer chooses to opt-out of an email you send doesn’t necessarily mean your relationship with them ends. There is no reason to turn off a customer with a difficult or lengthy opt-out process.
- Offer different publications. If you send different types of emails to the same list, but these emails cannot be subscribed to individually, you might be risking losing subscribers who want some but not all of your emails. Consider allowing your subscribers to subscribe individually to publications such as your weekly deals and your monthly update newsletter. You might find your readers attempting to opt-out remain signed up to at least one email publication.
- Offer different frequencies. Maybe the subscriber doesn’t want to receive email weekly. Let them choose to receive email at a different interval: maybe two times a month or once monthly. Be sure to come up with a plan for mailing at the varying intervals and keep your subscribers properly segmented.
- Confirm the opt-out. Show a confirmation page after the opt-out that confirms the opt-out took place. Be sure to communicate with your customer the time frame within which the mailings will cease. Provide a link on this confirmation page to sign back up in case the opt-out was a mistake. And provide a link back to your homepage.
- Solicit feedback. Either provide a field on the opt-out page to ask why the customer is unsubscribing or provide a link to a survey for more feedback. This can turn an opt-out that can’t be saved into an excellent diagnostic for you and your business.