When I talk to coaches or business owners about sending consistent emails to their list, they all have one concern- that people will unsubscribe.
The truth is, yes, some people will unsubscribe when you email them. But some won’t – some will buy.
While some unsubscribes are inevitable (and ok!), there are things you can do to reduce your unsubscribes and make sure that the people on your list are happy to hear from you.
1. Provide Quality Content
The quality of your emails is the single biggest defining factor in whether your email will be considered a welcome guest in your prospect’s inbox or an annoying intruder that sends them to the unsubscribe button.
Poor quality emails that lack purpose, deliver no value and aren’t interesting to your reader are more likely to get unsubscribes.
However, high-quality emails that engage, entertain and solve your prospect’s problems are usually welcomed – and even anticipated.
So what makes a quality email? It needs to give them something of value. Something that leaves them with a warm fuzzy feeling of “that was worth my time – I’m glad I read that”.
You can provide value in many ways.
You can entertain, educate, give advice, tell stories or provide resources that make your prospect’s life easier. Keep it engaging and be sure that it’s of interest to your target audience too.
2. Don’t Be Salesy
Good email marketing builds a connection with your prospects, communicating with them and sharing value – preparing them for when you ask for the sale.
If you’re trying to sell in every email or sounding too “salsy” then you’ll put people off. They’ll stop opening your emails and will likely unsubscribe.
Keep your nurture emails nurturing and save your selling for your sales campaigns.
3. Keep Your List Clean
Not everyone will be interested in what you have to sell – and that’s ok. You don’t need everyone to buy from you – you just need the right people.
Keeping your list clean means allowing those who have unsubscribed to be removed from your list (which is a legal requirement anyway) and doing a bit of housekeeping every now and then to remove dead email addresses (ones that bounce) or contacts who have not engaged in a long period of time.
When your list is clean it is filled with people who genuinely care about what you have to say. Your open rates will be higher, your engagement better and your deliverability more reliable.
4. Don’t Spam
Spamming means sending unsolicited emails to people who haven’t asked to hear from you. It’s also illegal in the UK – and many other countries too.
While scraping a list of your ideal prospect’s email addresses from the internet might sound like a great idea, it’s only going to increase your unsubscribes and probably get you a few F-Offs in reply too.
Building a list of warm, interested leads is a little slower – but will be far more successful in the long run.
Should you buy a list? That’s a question I get asked a lot. The answer is no – check out my previous blog post here to learn why built is better than bought…
5. Keep Your List Warm
And finally, one of the biggest reasons people unsubscribe is because they have forgotten who you are and why they signed up your list anyway?
Sending regular nurture emails helps keep your list engaged and reminds them why they chose to hear from you. When you stay in touch and consistently provide them with interesting, useful or valuable email content you start to build a relationship with them.
A regularly nurtured list is a warm list.
But it doesn’t take long for your prospects to go cold if you don’t keep up the good work. A cold prospect is less likely to buy and more likely to unsubscribe when you start emailing them again.
That’s what makes email newsletters so powerful – they keep you in front of your prospects, building a relationship and making sure you’re the first name that springs to mind when they decide it’s time to buy.
Want to learn more about email newsletters? Click here to see how I can help…
