E-mail marketing is a strategy that involves the practice of sending e-mails to prospective buyers and clients. It can help any company – big or small – to deliver information, improve sales, and foster customer loyalty.
E-mail marketing is a preferred method by many because it is fast, efficient, and surprisingly affordable. With e-mail accounts numbering up to 5.6 billion in 2019, American companies have shelled over $350 million to reach out to these consumers.
Although highly effective, e-mail marketing comes with one enemy: a high unsubscribe rate. Even if your customers signed up for your newsletter, there’s always a chance that they will unjoin your marketing list anytime soon. If you want to keep the opt-out rate below 0.5%, then you need to follow these tips on how to reduce the e-mail unsubscribe rate.
1. Classify Your Subscribers
While all your clients may be interested in the products or services you sell, they are not just a big homogenous group. They differ in age, location, and browsing and purchasing behavior. As such, you should use these trends to classify your subscribers.
For best results, divide your subscription list into the following by order: Highly-segmented, Segmented, and Unsegmented. The more segmented the list, the lesser number of clients should be included.
Remember, segmenting clients allow for better open rates, click-through rates, and revenues. More importantly, classifying your clients can lead to lower unsubscribe rates as well.
2. First Impressions Last
When a client opens his inbox, the first thing he or she will see is the sender and the subject of the e-mail. Write an uninteresting subject and you can expect your e-mail to be deleted or sent to the spam folder. Worse, your customer might opt to unsubscribe from your list.
To prevent this from happening, you need to tickle your recipient’s fancy. You can do this by writing an interesting subject line. For best results, your subject must have:
- 3 to 5 words
- 14 to 24 characters
- 1 to 4 emojis
- Small case letters
- A touch of personalization
- A greeting of thanks
3. Send Vital and Engaging Content
A useless e-mail can make your customers unsubscribe from your list. If you want to keep them in, you need to provide valuable data to these consumers.
Here are some tips that can help you achieve this:
a. Think of your goal
As with most things in life, you need to develop an objective for your e-mail newsletter.
Do you want to improve social media following or simply boost your sales?
When you write your content, you should keep this in mind.
b. Shape your strategy
Now that you have a definite goal, you need to formulate a strategy that best meets this objective.
For example, if you want to improve your sales, then you should consider promoting a certain product, discounted or not.
c. Target your recipient
As mentioned, it’s necessary to segment your clients. This will help you determine the best audience who will benefit from your e-mail newsletter.
By targeting customer preferences, you get to have higher click-throughs – and lower unsubscribe rates.
d. Tell your story
Here comes the most important part – writing the content of your e-mail newsletter.
As mentioned, if you want to boost sales, you need to focus on certain products. Tell the customers why they need to buy them.
More importantly, offer tempting deals (discounts, free shipping) that would prod them to make the purchase.
4. Make it Personal
You want your clients to feel that their newsletters are specifically intended for them. After all, a personalized e-mail delivers better transaction rates.
With that being said, the best way to personalize your content is to write the message as if you are talking to a close friend. Use your client’s name and your name (or that of your marketer) at the ‘from’ end of the letter.
When you collect info from your customers, try to go beyond the usual. Ask them about their preferences and hobbies. You could surely benefit from these facts when you create a personalized e-mail for your client.
5. Send a ‘cart’ Reminder
Clients who add to cart – and abandon them – may be a little half-hearted about their purchase. If you want to change their mind, then you should send a gentle reminder of their pending transaction. Apart from that, you could also send them links to other items that they may find interesting.
More than just reinforcing sales, a cart reminder will make you appear thoughtful. This is one trait that would save you from high unsubscribing rates.
6. Experiment with Sending Frequency
Having a segmented list of clients truly has many benefits. Apart from helping you tailor the right content, it can help you determine the best frequency for e-mail sending as well.
You first need to try a frequency that you can maintain for the time being. Once you get the hang of this, you could send e-mails to your clients asking them about how often they want to receive newsletters from you. Not only does this add a hint of personalization, but it keeps your e-mails safe from unsubscribing as well.
7. Optimize Your E-mails for Mobile Users
46% of all e-mail openings come from mobile users. With almost half of all clientele using their phones for e-mail checking, you should make your newsletters optimized for such devices. If you don’t, you stand to lose these people sooner or later.
Fortunately, optimizing your e-mail for mobile phones is a relatively easy thing to do. Here are some tips to help you out:
a. Check your pre-header text
This is the info that comes after the subject. If you want to improve click-through rates, then this area should contain all the interesting details about your e-mail.
b. Keep it short and sweet
E-mail users only spend about 3 seconds checking each e-mail. As such, you need to create something that would captivate a person’s attention – and prod him or her to open the e-mail. A good way to do so is to keep your e-mail short but sweet.
c. Create captivating call-to-action icons
If you want to get more clicks from your clients, then you need to appeal to their visual side. One way to do so is to use touch-friendly buttons measuring about 44 by 44 pixels. Not only are they engaging, but they usually lead to more clicks as well!
Reducing e-mail unsubscribing rates can be a challenge to most webmasters. But as long as you follow the tips above, you get a better chance of keeping these clients opted in.
