What should you do when you get lots of unsubscribes?
Disclaimer: This post may contain affiliate links to products or services that I recommend. I may receive a commission should you sign up through my link (but at no additional cost to you). I only suggest products and services that I wholeheartedly support and believe in and have either used myself or have used on behalf of a private client.
Have you ever checked your ESP and wondered “why am I getting lots of unsubscribes?” and then started to panic? Don’t worry, unsubscribes aren’t a bad thing, but if it’s an unusually high amount you’ll want to do this audit first before taking action.
What to do when you get lots of unsubscribes
First let’s start by saying that unsubscribes are a GOOD thing.
You want to be attracting your ideal customers to your email list. Those that want to hear from you, open your emails, engage with them AND buy your products.
There will always be those people who sign up for free stuff and never have the intention of buying, but eventually they will unsubscribe.
Which means, you don’t need to be paying for their email address in your email service provider (ESP). Cue celebrations that you’re building a list of buyers – yay!
But sometimes, things can go a little awry and suddenly you notice a big number of subscribers dropping off your list. So perhaps this requires some investigation to understand what’s going on.
This is especially important to discover if something is broken in your potential customers' journey through your content.
Do this audit if you have an unusually high number of unsubscribes
There are several questions you’ll need to ask yourself, and of course discover the answers to to see if this “leak” of subscribers can be fixed, or indeed, if it needs to be fixed.
Go through these in order:
Does your opt-in match your product range? AKA is it relevant?
If you’re offering an incentive for people to sign up for your email list before they buy from you, you need to make sure that what you’re offering is relevant to the products you sell.
If a reader signs up to learn more about a subject matter and then receives email about products on a totally different subject, then they won’t see the value in receiving those emails and unsubscribe.
It’s important to make sure there’s a consistent message or thread from the moment they opt-in to the central theme around all the emails they’ll receive from you.
If you need some ideas for opt-ins that will make sure it’s relevant to what you sell, see this post here:
12 Email Opt-In Ideas for Ecommerce
Have you set your subscribers expectations?
Have you set the stage for what your subscribers will receive from you? Once they sign up for your email list, you’ll want to tease out what kind of information and promotions they’ll receive from you so they’re not surprised when you start emailing them every day (if that’s your chosen schedule).
Set expectations in an email welcome sequence so they are prepped for what you’ll be sending.
See this post here to understand why an email sequence is important for your ecommerce business:
Is your “from” email and name consistent across all email delivery?
If you’re using different email addresses or your “from name” appears different from what they opted in for then you may be confusing your reader. This might lead them to unsubscribe when they possibly don’t mean to.
If your opt-in delivery comes from your brand name “Golden-Locks” but the rest of your emails come from “Tanya Smith” it’s not obvious that you’re the same entity. Make sure you’re consistent with how your emails look when they arrive in the inbox.
Take a look at this article which goes into more depth about email From names:
2 Simple Things to Improve Your Email Open Rate
Are you emailing on a consistent basis?
Similar to setting expectations for your readers, have you consistently sent emails to your subscribers? If you’ve yet to stick to a regular schedule you might find that the random times you email may increase the likelihood of people unsubscribing because they won’t know when to expect to hear from you.
This is especially important to consider if you often “ghost” your list and then all of a sudden come back with a flurry of emails to promote a product. Stay consistent, and on-brand.
Can you pinpoint where in the subscriber / customer journey your unsubscribes are happening?
You may need to take a deep dive into your email service provider (ESP) to find out at what point people are dropping off. It may be obvious if you have unsubscribes from your broadcast emails, but have you checked your automation sequences?
Is there a mismatch in your brand voice between the moment of automations ending and when they start receiving your broadcast emails? Is there a point in your sequence that might be misleading or off-putting? Do they unsubscribe right after buying from you? Is there some feedback you need to initiate to see why that might be?
Investigate where your unsubscribes occur during your subscriber or customer journey. There are a lot of questions that will come up from looking closer at this part of your audit, so be open minded and try to allow your curiosity to take the next step in researching and discovering what the problem might be.
Are you segmenting correctly?
Perhaps your product ranges are quite vast and solve many different problems or get different results for different people. This is where you might want to consider segmenting your list rather than sending all your emails to your full list.
For example, if your products are seasonal and you sell globally (therefore having different seasons in the two hemispheres) you might find your content and offers for the northern hemisphere will differ for those in the southern hemisphere.
If the message or offer you’re sending isn’t relevant to your reader, it may well put them off your brand and decide to unsubscribe. Consider how you might segment your list to get the right message to the right person at the right time.
You might also find this blog helpful: How to Segment Your Email List
Are your products one-time purchases?
If your company sells products that are one time purchases that potentially last a lifetime (or a decent chunk of time at least), then it’s likely that your subscribers will no longer NEED your emails. What you might want to consider here is what can you offer in terms of product development that can support your customers previous purchases or add value to it through a repeated purchasing system.
For example if you sell cloth nappies which are usually a one-time purchase for a customer, what else can you offer to support their use of your product? Perhaps eco-friendly detergent that works well for washing nappies?
Obviously this may change your business model but it’s worth considering brainstorming how else you can serve the customers you already have.
Is there really a problem?
Sometimes there isn’t a real problem. Maybe your customer's problem has been solved, maybe their problem is not a need to resolve right now, maybe they just lost interest. These are things that you can fix, but sometimes, your subscriber is just not your ideal customer and therefore it’s not a bad thing they left the party. Hence why unsubscribes aren’t always a bad thing!
Dig deep to find the answers
These are just a few of the things you should check before taking any action, because your action will depend on these answers. Use the suggestions in each of the scenarios and see if that resolves your unsubscribe issue.
One of the main things to remember is that your email list is organic. It will fluctuate as old subscribers choose to focus their time elsewhere and new ones enter your world. It is the natural ebb and flow of lists.
Make sure you take the time to regularly audit and clean your list to keep it working for you. And by “working for you”, I mean bringing in sales every email you send. If that’s not the case, you need to take a close look at your email strategy to see what elements might be missing.