What happens when you make subscribers work? They get angry.
I can't tell you how frustrating it is to receive an email that I no longer want and realize I can't unsubscribe from without jumping through hoops. Making your email subscribers log in to an account (if they can even remember the appropriate information), find the preferences area so they can then determine what they might be subscribed to - just so they can unsubscribe, takes a whole lot of work.
I have an email account that I rarely check simply because it contains email subscriptions that I can't seem to unsubscribe from because I signed up years ago and quite frankly no longer remember the passwords to get into those accounts. And there seems to be no easy way to figure out how to unsubscribe: sending emails back didn't work.
Sure, I could probably click on the "forgot my password" link and go from there, but honestly - my time is valuable (to me) and that's a whole lot of work just to tell you I don't want to hear from you. In fact, it really makes me quite annoyed. And an annoyed subscriber or customer is not usually a good thing.
It doesn't matter how big your email list is, it's quality over quanity. If you have a large list of annoyed subscribers who can't get off, surely your list isn't valuable to you. If your list isn't valuable to you, then neither are the people on the list. If the people on the list are not valuable to you - then what are you really saying about your current or potential customers/clients?
It's not about keeping subscribers at all costs. Sometimes people just don't want to subscribe any more. If you force me to stay on your list, rest assured I'm going to remember that in a negative way by, say, not giving you my business or telling my friends about it. How's that for Word of Mouth Marketing?
Moral of this post? Please! Make it easy for people to not only sign up to your newsletters (or any other content), but make it just as easy for them to unsubcribe. Feel free to give them the option to tell you why you they want to unsubscribe but don't make it impossible for them to leave you.
Remember that old cliche - if you love something let it go, if it's meant to be it will come back? You can apply that here too.
Photo Credit: Incurable Hippie; Flickr
3 comments:
Rebecca:
You are so right. Being able to unsubscribe is more important than being able to subscribe. It's the quality of the list that makes a mailing list powerful... not the quantity of names.
Do you do email marketing? Which service do you use?
Chris Brown,
Branding & Marketing
Chris,
I wish more marketers agreed with you and I!
I personally don't do any email marketing of my own at the moment, but I'm a web-marketing consultant who spent a number of years managing an e-brokerage division, including a deployment system, creative recommendations and email list rental best practices.
I continue to consult clients on best practices and how to choose the right email service providers for them. Feel free to connect with me @ rebecca dot atkinson @ rogers dot com or on Twitter (rebecca_m)as I believe we follow each other and we can chat more if you have any specific questions. Happy to always give my two cents :)
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