7 Proven Ways to Reduce Email Unsubscribe Rates
What is an Unsubscribe Rate
Email Unsubscribe Rate is calculated by dividing the number of people unsubscribed by the number of emails delivered.
It measures how relevant your users think your email content is to them. If many people are unsubscribing from your emails after your communications, it might be a good idea to intervene and tweak the content a bit. More people unsubscribing will lead to fewer leads for marketing, impacting conversions and sales negatively.
What is a Good Unsubscribe Rate?
No matter how hard you try, there still might be some people who would want to unsubscribe from your email list due to their reasons. It is not advisable to aim for a 0% unsubscribe rate.
A good average unsubscribe rate is less than 0.2%, and anything above 0.5% will demand attention. Try to make some changes in your campaigns and measure the results for a while.
7 Proven Ways to Reduce Email Unsubscribe Rates
Keeping your email list clean will not only reduce unsubscribes but will also result in an improvement in other important email marketing KPIs.
Sharing 7 proven ways to reduce email unsubscribe rates:
Segment Your Email List by Interests
Your segmentation strategy can make or break your campaign. You need to understand what your audience wants and look for common characteristics based on demographics, psychographics, geographics, and user behavior.
This helps in making sure that you share the relevant content with the right people and at the right time. By including personalization in your communications, you can build a better relationship with your users.
Use Single and Double Opt-Ins
Single opt-in mechanisms require the users to share their email addresses with you. These users directly make it to your email list. In case of double opt-ins, the users will need to verify their email addresses and confirm their subscription by clicking on a different link sent to their inbox. This adds an extra step for the users to take before you start sending out communications to them.
Create Relevant Content
Content is the king. Your emails need to be relevant for the users to keep wanting them. They should add value to their time. You cannot expect the users to keep opening boring emails over and over that they find irrelevant. Keep learning more about your users as they progress in their journey with you. This will allow you to make necessary changes in your email marketing as you go.
Irrelevant content will lead to more people unsubscribing from your emails.
Pay Attention to Email Frequency
The frequency of your emails will define whether the users keep wanting for more, whether they simply forget that you exist, or whether they think that you are spamming them with unnecessary information all the time.
Focus on quality over quantity. Content that adds value will lead to more email opens and fewer email unsubscribes. Do not send emails just for the sake of sending emails. Study your campaign analytics and trigger them at the best times to send as per your marketing and CRM tool.
Personalize
Users love personalized content. It makes them feel exclusive and more likely to engage with personalized campaigns. Personalization does not just mean adding the user’s first name in the email and the subject lines. It is more than that. You have access to the user journey with you with all the complex steps.
Automation can prove to be a great help in personalizing individual content. Smart email campaigns can be triggered based on the actions taken by the user.
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How to Create an Email Campaign
Optimize for Mobile
The world has gone mobile. Many users prefer to check their communications on mobile phones these days. Your email marketing campaigns have to be adjusted accordingly. It would amount to a bad user experience if the emails do not load properly or do not look good on mobile devices.
Test for responsiveness for various devices before sending out the final campaign. Keep the subject lines short.
Ask for Feedback
No matter how well you design your email campaigns, there is always room for improvement. You should take regular feedback from your users so that you know what works for them and what does not.
Have an easy opt-out mechanism and make it accessible. Asking for the reason for unsubscribing might give you important insights into the user preferences so that you can continue to clean and build your email list effectively.
Also, read 6 Email List Building Strategies for 2022.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is my unsubscribe rate so high?
There are a lot of factors at play when it comes to email opt-outs. To reduce your unsubscribe rate, focus on having a good segmentation strategy in place, creating relevant content for your users, optimizing the content for mobile, and collecting regular feedback from the end users.
Can I mass unsubscribe from emails?
Usually, you will see an option to unsubscribe from emails from a particular brand in their email footer. There are modern tools that let you mass unsubscribe from promotional emails with a few clicks. You can also adjust your email settings with your email service provider.