Top Ways to Improve Your Email Marketing - Page 8/10

Optimizing the Unsubscribe Page

Regardless of how well you succeed in following best practices for your opt-in process, opt-in subscription pages, and regardless of how targeted your content is to what you believe your readers’ or customers’ needs are, it is an undeniable fact that your list will experience some churn. People will simply lose interest or perhaps they are getting information from you via a different avenue, such as direct mail or proactively on their own, from your website, rather than waiting for your newsletter.

Regardless of the reasons, people will want to leave your list. However, this too is an opportunity for you to optimize the process and glean more information at the same time, helping you to continue to improve your site and your content.

If your Web site’s unsubscribe page is like most others, it is probably a one-shot transactional page where the subscriber goes to opt out. But this is selling this page and your subscribers short. Subscribers can have several reasons for wanting to opt out, and a one-shot page doesn’t recognize those alternatives.

Unsubscribing itself has evolved over the years. Early on, marketers threw up one barrier after another to keep subscribers around or simply ignored unsubscribe requests. That tactic backfired, of course, giving rise to the dreaded “report as spam” button. So marketers moved on to a no-questions-asked policy: You want off this list? Click here and you’re gone. Instead, treat your unsubscribe page like a landing page. Give subscribers options to manage their subscriptions and market your other email programs that might better meet their interests. Design is key to this page. Keep text to a minimum, remove unnecessary navigation, headers, etc., and use graphics and buttons so that visitors can comprehend their options by browsing, rather than having to read a bunch of copy.

Phase One: Improve the Process

Assess how many clicks it takes to get from the unsubscribe link to the thank-you or acknowledgement page. (Hint: the correct answer should be one.) Don’t make someone wade through four or five pages.

Don’t require a password to unsubscribe or make recipients log in to a preference center. You might require a password at opt-in to reduce bogus subscriptions, but malicious unsubscribing isn’t a major problem.

If you require recipients to send a removal request only by email, trade it in for a Web-based system. Unsubscribe requests, and confirmations, can get lost or overlooked. The email also can’t tell you why the subscriber is leaving unless she takes the time to write a note.

Test your unsubscribe system frequently to make sure it works. Test the link every time you send an email, and check the whole process from the first click to the last confirmation about monthly.

Watch all mailboxes associated with your email program to see if anyone complains the unsubscribe isn’t working.

Do away with the unmonitored reply-to address. You miss out on important feedback that could alert you to problems before the recipient feels forced to unsubscribe.

When you improve the unsubscribe process, you boost deliverability. That’s because you make it just as convenient, if not more so, for subscribers to opt out the right way instead of clicking the “report spam” button. That, in turn, improves your reputation with ISPs and third-party authenticators and accreditors, making you less vulnerable to blocking and filtering.