Are you forcing your audience to 'unsubscribe'?
Before we start, I want to be very clear about my intent for this post.
It is not about making you, or anyone, feel bad about their email practices.
This is about giving you the POV of your audience.
Your readers - who you want to take time out of their day to read what you have to say.
But sometimes my Aries Sun + Mercury (and a bunch of other planets) get super fired up, and so do I
Anyhooo… here is my advice:
Please give your audience a way to opt-out of specific emails.
Because when you don't, you're leaving them with two options:
Delete your emails without opening (which does nothing to help your open rates)
Unsubscribe completely
Now maybe you're thinking, “well, if they're unsubscribing that's ok, because then they aren't my audience."
Sure, for some that might be it. Or, what's more likely, you've lost someone who's interested in you and your services, but not that particular program.
A Universal business truth is this: it's easier to get repeat clients than it is to get new ones. This is true for any business.
If someone is on your list, they have already said 'yes' to you at least once. Which means they're most likely somewhere on your Bullseye….but without an opt-out option, you've lost them.
Let me give you an example:
The other day I got an email from someone I think is pretty cool. Let's call them O (not their actual name or initials)
O is promoting something they're an affiliate for. Cool. Not an issue for me.
However, in this case, I'm not a fan of the person they're promoting. To the point where I'm either going to just auto-delete their emails for a while, or I'm going to unsubscribe.
My inbox is full enough. I don't need any unnecessary (ie irrelevant) emails clogging it up.
While I’m not ready to hire O (maybe I won't ever be) they're very likely going to lose me as a lead - lukewarm as I may be.
Now if getting qualified leads isn't an issue for you, this may not matter.
But if it is, then I beg you to add some sort of opt-out.
If your email provider doesn't allow this, here's how I do it:
Create a tag and name it Opt-Out or [Name of promo] Opt-Out.
Get a link - it could be to a giphy like this, or a non-linked page on your website like this.
Add the link somewhere in your email, even if it's just in a sentences like
Then, if you're emails are batched and in a workflow, just make sure that anyone tagged, isn't sent the emails.
If you're like me and half the time you're sending things manually, then when I go to send an email, I just exclude anyone with the tag.
I'd much rather have to take an extra couple of minutes here and there, and keep someone on my list, than have them unsubscribe based on one promotion. 😊