Don’t Lose Your Email Subscribers with a Standard ‘Unsubscribe’ Link
When I returned from a long absence and ordered a pizza from Domino’s I started receiving daily (yes, daily!) emails and text messages with deals and discount vouchers. I don’t know how much pizza they thought I ate, but I didn’t need daily offers and so I clicked the link to unsubscribe.
But then I was presented with these options and instead of never hearing from Domino’s again I now hear from them once a week:
I’m happy with a weekly update and I’m sure Domino’s much prefers less frequent to never again.
Providing your subscribers with options when they click ‘unsubscribe’ is a win-win situation. And yet the vast majority of marketing emails take the ‘all or nothing’ approach — you either get everything they want to send you, or nothing at all. This is a massive missed opportunity.
Now let me be really clear up front — if people don’t want to get your emails anymore you need to honour this and make it as easy as possible for them to unsubscribe. Apart from being rude, there are tough penalties for senders who continue to send unwanted emails.
But if people are happy to hear from you on the terms that they set and can control, then why wouldn’t you do everything you could to make this happen? After all, for all of the buzz around social media email remains one of the most efficient and effective marketing channels.
So what are these alternatives? You have 3 great options for keeping in touch with your subscribers — illustrated here with 16 examples.
Alternative #1 — Let them choose the frequency
This could be called the ‘Domino’s Model’ — giving subscribers the option to choose how often they want to hear from you.
Book Authority
The Art of Manliness
Kogan
Alternative #2 — Let them choose the topics
This is the most common option in play — providing the option for subscribers to only receive emails on the topics that are of interest to them.
Apple
Asos
Booking.com
BuzzFeed
Desiring God
HubSpot
Netflix
Nextdoor
Spotify
Stayz
Zapier
Alternative #3 — Let me have a breather
This option is less common and seems to be used by senders who are pretty relentless with their emails (yes, I’m looking at you Kogan).
Kogan
Opportunity
How do I make this happen?
As you can see, there are some good options for not losing subscribers via a generic unsubscribe link. But in a vast sea of email marketing tools (and I’ve reviewed 30 of them across 35 criteria), which provide this functionality?
I’ll share these options with you in the next post in this series — you can follow me for updates, or subscribe here:
And if your subscribers opt-out from all email communications, don’t forget to give them the option to follow you on social media:
