Yes, it sounds crazy, why would you purposely make it easy for a subscriber to opt out of your email communications? Well, for starters, it’s been best practice in email marketing for decades. And now, it’s moved back to the top of the list of priorities since Gmail and Yahoo have issued new sender requirements (effective February 1, 2024.)

What makes people want to unsubscribe?

 

Most of the time, it’s the frequency of emails being sent. With that in mind, if this blog prompts nothing else, perhaps it’s time to look at the number of emails you’re sending and consider reducing how many and how often you’re contacting subscribers.

The second main reason is content. Your goal is to send the right message to the right people at the right time. If your emails don’t achieve that, subscribers will want to stop receiving communications from your brand. Better email practices like personalization, segmentation, creating more engaging subject lines, leveraging dynamic content, obtaining feedback, and cleaning lists can help keep them interested and engaged.

Last but not least, it’s a question of opt-in. While consent should be top of mind for every marketer, we keep seeing confusing consent forms, pre-ticked boxes, and obscure marketing opt-ins in the email industry. It’s essential the newsletter sign-up process is clear so there are no surprises. A clear opt-in form is a must, and welcome emails are the best way to set expectations with subscribers on both the frequency and content of emails you’ll be sending them.

How unsubscribe rates can help your brand

 

While high unsubscribe rates are generally not the goal in email marketing, they can be a catalyst for positive change, driving improvements in content relevance, audience engagement, and overall email marketing strategy. Viewing unsubscribe rates as an opportunity rather than solely as a negative metric can lead to more effective and efficient marketing efforts. Consider capturing the reason why subscribers choose to stop receiving emails. Keep your question short and sweet and use this invaluable data to improve your email marketing strategy.

Unsubscribes are also very healthy for your audience. Unengaged contacts being removed from a list is helpful for marketers. When a contact unsubscribes from a list, it helps brands save money (you are not sending emails to contacts who ignore them), keep a good sender reputation, and avoid deliverability issues. And, letting people opt out of your messages can improve open rates, click-through rates, and sending efficiency.

Unsubscribes could save you from spam complaints

 

Unsubscribes are not harmful to your email program’s reputation with mailbox providers. In the world of email engagement metrics, unsubscribes are considered neutral, meaning they won’t harm email deliverability rates.

Spam complaints on the other hand can devastate a sender’s deliverability and reputation. Complaints are recorded and taken seriously by mailbox providers. Often, a high spam complaint rate can cause emails to land in the junk folder.

Bottom line: The email ecosystem judges spam complaints harshly, but won’t hold unsubscribes against senders. If you make it as easy to unsubscribe as it is to hit “report spam,” you’re likely to get a net positive impact to your sending reputation.

Make it super easy for subscribers to opt out

 

Our recommendation is to put a prominent “click here to unsubscribe” link at the top of the email message so there’s no need to scroll down to the footer to unsubscribe.

Make the unsubscribe process as easy as possible. Subscribers should not have to navigate through multiple web pages to find the unsubscribe button or untick multiple boxes to make sure they are unsubscribing to all communications. Unsubscribe forms must be clear and concise.

Ensure that unsubscribe requests are consistently honored across all your IPs and sending domains for every email marketing communication and process unsubscribe requests within 2 days.    

For those of you who are already following these best practices, awesome!  If you’d like to take it to the next level, we encourage you to periodically send messages confirming that recipients do in fact want to stay subscribed and consider unsubscribing recipients who don’t open or read your messages.

We know a lot of investment—both time and money—goes into acquiring new customers and engaging existing customers. It sounds counterintuitive to make it easy for them to unsubscribe to your brand communications, but it could build goodwill. Engaged customers will always find a way to interact with your brand, especially if they’re not being annoyed. And keep in mind: It’s not about the number of subscribers you have, it’s about how your subscribers are using the content (read: open and click through rates) that tell you how engaged your customers really are.

Contact us if you need help developing an unsubscribe strategy for your brand – experts from our Professional Services team have tons of ideas and easy-to-implement processes that use Acoustic Connect forms with segmentation and automation features to make it easy for you to set up an effective unsubscribe program for your brand.