#53: 7 Ways To Reduce Your Email List Unsubscribe Rates

Learn More Earn More Business Growth Podcast

Host: Brian Webb

Episode 53: 7 Ways To Reduce Your Email List Unsubscribe Rates

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VALUE BOMBS

So you're doing the right thing, you're doing the hard work to stay in touch with your customers and your prospective customers. And after all of that hard work, people keep unsubscribing. That's painful. Today, I'm going to give you seven tips to reduce your email unsubscribe rates. If you're going to do all the hard work, you want to make sure you maximize the benefit. So, let's jump into the show.

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TRANSCRIPT

Brian Webb:

So you're doing the right thing, you're doing the hard work to stay in touch with your customers and your prospective customers. And after all of that hard work, people keep unsubscribing. That's painful. Today, I'm going to give you seven tips to reduce your email unsubscribe rates. If you're going to do all the hard work, you want to make sure you maximize the benefit. So, let's jump into the show.

This is the Learn More Earn More Business Growth podcast.

Brian Webb:

Hey, everyone. Welcome to the show. I'm your host, Brian Webb. This podcast is designed to be your number one premier place to learn the framework, secrets, and growth hacks to grow and scale your business smarter and faster. While you're working on pursuing your dreams and growing your business, I'll be here to help you make better decisions and avoid costly pitfalls and expensive mistakes along the way. So, let's go ahead and jump into today's episode.

            It takes superhuman effort to build an email list, to begin with, set up workflows, and manage the responses. After going through all of this, it's painful to see some of your contacts, lots of them, slipping out of your fingers. And your first inclination might be that they're not valuable, but that's not necessarily the case. The truth is, email unsubscribe rates are a necessary evil. It's a part of life. It helps clean up your email list. It ensures that your emails are reaching the right people who might take the action that you want to see them take.

            But of course, I want to see you lose as few people as possible, but let's start by giving you a baseline. What are some of the average email unsubscribe rates across various industries? I'll just cover three or four or just a few.

            In advertising and marketing, an open rate average is about 18.5%. An unsubscribe rate is about 0.2%. In education, you're going to get closer to a 25% open rate with a click-through rate of nearly 4.5%, and about a 0.1% unsubscribe rate. Let's talk about a couple more. Let's look at healthcare. In healthcare, the average open rate is about 23.4% with about 0.3% unsubscribing. Let's just do one more. Let's go into retail. 12.6% is the average open rate, clearly ignorable, and according to Woorise.com, a 0% unsubscribe rate. Now clearly, we know it's not zero, but the average is 0%.

            So, that gives you a few baseline metrics and you can see how your stats compare to those. So, here are seven tips to improve your unsubscribe rate. Number one, consider using double opt-ins. Double opt-ins require the users to confirm their consent to sign up for your email newsletter or your email sequences.

            So basically when someone signs up, they get a follow-up email asking if they will confirm their consent for the email. Once they've done so, they have double opted in. The downside of this is that it's an additional step, which could slow down your email list building. The upside is that those who give you double opt-ins have lesser chances of unsubscribing from your emails, especially if you're serving them really, really well.

            Tip number two, consider giving them the ability to choose the frequency in which they receive your emails. Now, you might imagine there's no hard and fast rule as to how many times you can email your list. It can really depend on your industry and a variety of variables, but the best way to know how frequently you should email them is just to ask. Let's set the preference. Maybe they want your daily emails or just your weekly emails. Maybe they only want the emails about special promotions. But giving them the choice will reduce your unsubscribed rates.

            Number three. Oh, my goodness. Oh, my goodness. Oh, my goodness. We'll get back to the show in just a moment, but first, a quick word from our sponsor, Whatbox Digital.

            Do you want to grow and scale your business better and faster with fewer mistakes? Of course you do. Then you're in the right place, right now. Like so many others, you're tired of relying on a failed hope marketing system where you're spending valuable time and money on marketing, and then hoping it works. You've thrown away tons of money towards marketing mistakes and failures, and you wish you could get all of that money back. When you don't have a reliable system for generating leads and acquiring new customers, then you're doomed to suffer from industry downturns, lumpy cash flow, and ultimately higher stress and sleepless nights.

            I'm Brian Webb, the CEO and senior guide at Whatbox Digital. I know where you are and I've been there before. It pains me to watch business owners and entrepreneurs suffer from relying on hope and bad advice that simply doesn't work. I've had the privilege of owning and leading a successful marketing agency in the greater Houston metroplex for all almost 20 years.

            Having worked in over 60 industry verticals, I've led my team and clients to achieve business growth time and time again, and that's exactly what I want to do for you. Our marketing strategy playbook consulting engagement allows us to do just that. In just four weeks or less, we'll take you through our three-step process that will open your eyes to the readily available growth opportunities you need, want, and deserve.

            To learn more or just get started, simply go to WhatboxDigital.com/strategy and click the Get Started Now button. Or, just text the word playbook to 832-324-2432. Don't waste another day or another dollar on failing hope marketing strategies that do not work. If you want to grow and scale your business better and faster, and with fewer mistakes, you are in the right place. You need to get unstuck, you need a plan, and we're here to help. Let's get started today right now.

            Number three. Oh, my goodness. Oh, my goodness. Oh, my goodness. The right subject lines. Whether you believe it or not, the subject line that you use, even though it's short, has the power to make your customers open or delete your email, to begin with. It's reported that 47% of email recipients open an email based exclusively on the subject line.

            The subject line of your email has only one job to do, which is to create a sufficient amount of curiosity on behalf of the reader that they open your email. If the email is the boat you want them to jump into, then the subject line is the hook. Need help writing better email subject lines or advertising headlines? Go to WhatboxDigital.com, and reach out to us. We can help.

            Number four, think about segmenting your customers based on which stage of a funnel that they are in. Surely you can relate to this. Getting emails that are irrelevant can feel annoying to you as the recipient. All of us, at some point in time, have received emails that we have no clue who sent it and for what purpose they sent it. The immediate reaction we have is that we want to delete it or mark it as spam right away.

            Tip number five; test, experiment, try different content formats. When you have a variety of different types of content formats, it can heighten the experience for your users and entertain them better. For example, it's easier and more interactive to broadcast an upcoming event with a video than it is with a text message. But not too terribly unlike that, consider embedding infographics to highlight major features; upcoming milestones, discounts, coupons, whatever. Gifs and animated gifs can also play a huge role in making emails come to life.

            Hopefully, number six will be one of the most obvious, which is to make sure that your emails are optimized for mobile-friendliness. Did you know that 75% of Gmail users access their email on a mobile device first? A few things that you can do to optimize for being mobile-friendly. One, use shorter pre-header text, fewer than 60 characters. Two, make the call to action button prominent and easily clickable. Three, keep the email body short, and concise. Four, use images and elements that load faster. Five, choose single-column emails for longer text. And six, choose double-column emails for image-heavy emails.

            And when all else fails, go to tip number seven: ask them why they unsubscribed when they did. Yeah, this might seem like a no-brainer, but asking your unsubscribing users is the best way to know the gaps in your email content strategies. There's plenty of survey software available to you in the marketplace that you can use to collect feedback via email.

            They help you ask the right questions like, "Is this too generic? Am I sending you too many emails too frequently? Don't the customers remember signing up? Is this too promotional?" Speaking of being too promotional, in everything you do, consider this a 7.5 bonus tip, always leverage the WIFFT principle. When you're emailing your users your list, what's in it for me? Not me, them. What's in it for them?

            Everything you do, what's in it for them? When you're drafting an email to your email list and everything in it is about you, you're destined for failure before you even get it sent out. Email marketing is a legitimate and rewarding marketing strategy for growing your business smarter and faster, but it's not easy to master either. Every brand, whether it's established or just getting started, struggles with controlling its email unsubscribed rates. So you and I are no different.

            I hope these seven tips were helpful. Need help with your email marketing? Go to WhatboxDigital.com. We are here to always, always, always help you grow your business smarter and faster. That's it for today. I will see you on the next episode.

            Thanks for joining me today and listening to this episode of the Learn More Earn More Business Growth Podcast. We can be found on all the major platforms like Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, and even Amazon Music.

            I genuinely hope you enjoyed today's episode. And if you did, I'd be honored if you'd subscribe to the show and leave us a rating and an honest review, I'd love to connect with you on Instagram. You can find me at @BrianWebb, and the show sponsor Whatbox Digital can be found at, as you might guess, @WhatboxDigital. You can also find me and Whatbox Digital on Facebook and LinkedIn with the links in the show notes. This will allow you to stay up to date and never miss out on exciting new announcements, events, special offers, and opportunities, and you'll be in the know when we drop a new episode of the Learn More Earn More Business Growth podcast.

            And if you'd like to send me a DM on Instagram to say hello, or share your thoughts on how we can make this podcast even better for you, I'd love to hear from you. Again, thanks for listening. Let's go and grow together. I'll see you on the next episode.

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DESCRIPTION

The Learn More Earn More Business Growth Podcast is sponsored by Whatbox Digital, a marketing and consulting agency in the Greater Houston Metroplex. This podcast is your premier place to learn the frameworks, secrets, and growth hacks to grow and scale your business and revenue smarter and faster.