No one likes rejection, but when a contact unsubscribes from your database, it can benefit your business as it serves as an indicator that your emails are not as relevant and targeted as they could be or that your brand is not relevant to that specific contact anymore.

Some contacts don’t always unsubscribe but select the “mark as spam” option which can damage your sending IP’s reputation which, in turn, influence your deliverability rate and inbox placement.

Pinnacle, a gaming and sportsbook brand, implemented a solution following several best practice techniques in its preference centre. Here are a few tips based on their approach to improve the customer’s email unsubscribe journey.

Tip #1 Clarity and brand personality

Ensure that you have a concise and clear layout to make the web form easier to interact with. Brand personality could be implemented in the form using relevant images that support each part of the form.

Tip #2 Collect more data

Collect more data behind the unsubscribe form than just the actual unsubscribe action from the customer e.g. the date of the unsubscribe, the referring email (from which email did the unsubscribe action originate from), email preferences, the reason for opting out etc.

Tip #3 Offer a snooze option

Offer the option to pause or snooze your emails. Give contacts the option to choose a snooze end date. This provides the opportunity to welcome contacts back from their “snooze” to re-engage contacts with your brand, remind them what to expect from your emails, promote your USPs and provide them with email preference options for future communications.

Tip #4 Preference and frequency management

When contacts want to unsubscribe, present a final option to them to manage their preferences which could be the difference between keeping them and losing them from your database. Contacts should be able to update their profiles according to their interests which, in turn, will enhance email personalisation via dynamic content based on interests.

Tip #5 Find a reason

To offer an optional field requesting the reason for unsubscribing could provide valuable insight why customers are opting out. Future marketing strategies could be based on this insight to decrease your unsubscribe rates.

Tip #6 Automatic unsubscribes

To automatically unsubscribing contacts can be beneficial to maintain a higher-quality email list and stronger IP reputation. However, this should be considered together with targeting active users for your regular sends. For example, if a contact has not opened your emails in a certain time period it is an opportunity to improve relevance through segmentation and targeting, implement re-engagement programs to inspire them to open again and to decrease the frequency of broadcasting emails to the unengaged contacts.

Tip #7 Keep it simple

The unsubscribe process should be kept simple and easy. Try to avoid to insert the unsubscribe link behind every login – it’s better to put the unsubscribe option in the email footer which is standard practice. When people unsubscribe from your database, it’s best to remove that contact from your entire database and not sending them any other future communications.

To optimise the email unsubscribe journey, keep these tips in mind. This way, you’ll have a healthier email marketing database to ultimately perform better. Remember, if a contact unsubscribes, you’ll have better insight where you’re going wrong.

References:

Clapham, C. 2017. It’s not you, it’s me: 8 tips for optimising the email unsubscribe journey. Online URL: https://www.ibm.com/think/marketing/its-not-you-its-me-8-tips-for-optimising-the-email-unsubscribe-journey/