Unsubscribe Me: Please! – Making it easy with 5 BEST PRACTICES!

Well, have you thought of sending snail mails repeatedly to customers despite them not responding to you by return or when they ask you to stop the same? Certainly not because it involves a lot of efforts! Email alternatively is just one click work and thereupon, most marketers tend to overlook unsubscribe phenomena and continue to throw junk at their subscribers.

As Gmail has introduced an UNSUBSCRIBE link right at the top, the world of email marketers has come crashing down. But, if you provide your subscribers with valuable content your subscribers would stay for you for your lifetime, so don’t worry and provide your subscribers with easy unsubscribing options.

1. One Click Unsubscribe

One of the best practices is to make sure unsubscribe happens through a single click. If your subscribers are unsubscribing you that means that they don’t want to see you in their inbox or reduce the frequency of emails received from you and on top of that if the unsubscribe doesn’t happen just in one click, chances are they mark you as a spam. Keep the unsubscribe link either in the bottom or top, but make sure you provide such link. Once the customer unsubscribes, ask him for the feedback may be, a short survey to gain loyalty of prospective subscribers.

2. Preference Centers

Expend some efforts on your preference centers. Preference centers save time and also reduces the unsubscribe rate. With one click unsubscribing, you lose your subscribers directly, however, as it is legally required, provide the unsubscribe link that links to a preference center.  When your subscriber unsubscribe, he is redirected to the preference center where he has the flexibility to choose the communication preferences rather than totally opting out from the list. If he wants to turn emails off from you, provide them that as an option too.

3. List Hygiene

Maintaining the hygiene of the list is again one of the most vital considerations an email marketer has to think about. As an ideal unsubscribing best practice, please make sure that all those subscribers who have emotionally unsubscribed with your brand are broomed out of the list and the list is updated with subscribers who are in touch with you for 6 months or 12 months in some cases.

4. Legal Compliance

If you are an email marketer, you also need to take care of all the legal compliances connected with email marketing. According to the law:

– A visible and operable unsubscribe mechanism must present in all emails.

– Consumer opt-out requests are honored within 10 days.

– You keep opt-out lists and suppress against these for all future sends.

– Enable opt-out of email communications with a single click.

 5. Confirmation

Confirm the subscribers on ideally the same landing page saying “You are unsubscribed – We will miss you”. An emotional message might help to get a second chance and a confirmation at the same time will ensure that unsubscribe is successful. If you follow a process wherein you unsubscribe a subscriber within the stipulated legal time of 10 days, show the confirmation and give them a deadline as to from when they will stop receiving emails. Avoid sending one more email – confirmation email.

Summing it all up, following the aforementioned email unsubscribing best practices will ensure that your recipients can do away with you as per their preferences and you will not come under the legitimate trap.   It’s better to have less, but happy subscribers.