Ask Steph: How can I troubleshoot unsubscribes from my email list?

Today I'm answering a question from a listener to wants to know how to troubleshoot the unsubscribers from his email list. While there will always be people who unsubscribe from you, in this episode I share the common reasons why they do and how you can mitigate these.

– The importance of looking at the number of unsubscribers within the context of your email list size.
– How understanding *why* people are unsubscribing can you clues about their expectations.
– Why matching their expectations for your emails is important.
– Why meeting your unsubscribers where they're at now is what creates valuable email content.
– How changing your perspectives about unsubscribers will help you to see what they really mean for your business.

 

 

Ask Steph: How can I troubleshoot unsubscribes from my email list?

 

Today’s question is for anyone who's trying to build their email list and who is worried about your audience unsubscribing from the emails that they are sending along the way. Today's question: 

 

Hi Steph, inspired by your daily biz boosters, I have a freebie where I send daily free tips via email.

Unfortunately, a lot of people unsubscribe from them – about one unsubscribe per email. There is an unsubscribe from all of my emails and a choose which emails you want to receive from me button. Why do you think people choose to unsubscribe from all of my emails and not just from my daily tips? Do you think I should stop sending the daily tips or perhaps change the name of the button in order for them to understand that they can unsubscribe only from my daily tips and I don't lose them completely?

On the one hand, this situation is seriously hurting my email list. On the other hand, I've received great reviews, new leads, and a chance to warm up my audience leading to my launch. I don't know what I should do. 

 

The first thing I want to say is you've said there are quite a lot of people unsubscribing. One unsubscribe per email could be a huge amount if your email list only has, say, a hundred people on it. Or, on the other hand, it could be a really good number of people because it's pretty standard to have people unsubscribing from our emails. So we need a little bit more context around how big the email list is. To give you an idea, every time we send out one of our Monday, Wednesday, Friday emails, we get about 20 to 30 people unsubscribing.

And then the Daily Biz Boosters list gets about one to two people unsubscribing every day, right? That's a significant number compared to one per day for your tips emails, 20 to 30 per email that we send every Monday, Wednesday, Friday. But it all depends on the size of the list, but it is so completely normal to have people unsubscribing.

I understand though, that we want to keep the unsubscribes to a minimum. So what we want to look at is, why are they unsubscribing. Now, some email marketing platforms will allow you to do a little unsubscribe survey, where you can find out why they unsubscribed. 

 

They may just be decluttering from non-actionable emails.

And sometimes it's just that people want to declutter their inboxes. They just don't want to be receiving any kind of emails that are not actionable emails, right? The knowledge-based emails or sales emails, or they are something that they signed up for a while ago and are no longer interested in, and they want to declutter their inbox, which is why they're choosing to remove all of their emails.

I know that when I'm unsubscribing from something, this is usually the reason why I'm unsubscribing, but it could be really useful to find out from the people who are unsubscribing, why are you unsubscribing. 

 

Update the wording of your unsubscribe text.

The other thing I want to notice here is with the two options, it's unsubscribe from the daily tips or choose which emails you want to receive.

And when I see the button that says, choose which emails you want to receive, ─ that to me sounds like a lot of work and it doesn't sound like I'm going to be unsubscribing. ─ So I would be potentially changing the text on that so that you have the two options are unsubscribe from the daily tips, but continue to get my other emails. And the other option is unsubscribe from all emails. So it doesn’t sound like, oh, I have to go through and decide and it's going to take me so much time. No, it's just option A, option B. Do I want to keep receiving the other emails or do I just want to lose all of the emails? 

Now, something else to be mindful of is what are they opting in for? Other emails that they are receiving from you, those daily tips, do those match what they expected to receive when they opted in for them? So for example, do they know that they're getting daily tips? Like, did you explicitly say on the opt-in page, get a daily tip from me? What do they expect those daily tips to be about? 

So it could be that they signed up for daily tips, expecting it to be about one thing. And then the daily tips that you send them are slightly different to what they expected. So they're thinking this is no longer relevant for me and they are unsubscribing. 

 

Get feedback from your audience.

Something you could potentially add to your sequence when they subscribe is maybe an automated email that asks them to hit reply and let you know what kind of tips they would like to receive from you. Really simple email. And then that way you can find out what they expect and what you can send to them that's going to be the most valuable for them. 

Another thing you could do is 14 days after they sign up, you could set up an automated email asking them for their feedback and maybe you could incentivize them to fill out a survey. So, hey, I'll give you a $5 voucher for Starbucks or Amazon or something if you fill out this survey giving feedback on the emails that you have received so far. And then that way you can start to gauge how your tips are meeting them where they are at and understand, you know, why they want to, why they signed up for them and what kind of emails you can keep sending to them to keep them on that list. 

 

Your content may not be meeting your audience where they are at.

Another thing I want to point out is sometimes we can give our audience tips that don't quite meet them where they are at. So are the tips that you are sending to your subscribers meeting them where they're at? What do I mean by that? I often use the example of dog training. So let's say that I am a dog trainer and I'm teaching you how to get your dog to stop barking.

You have a dog that is old and you believe that it's too late to teach your dog to stop barking. If I'm sending you tips saying here are five ways to get your dog to stop barking, that tip's not meeting this person where they are at because they believe that their dog is too old to stop barking. So they're not paying attention, they're not finding them useful.

If your tips are not meeting your subscribers where they are at, you could be overwhelming them because suddenly they're like, Oh, there's all this extra stuff I need to do because you're adding more to their to do list. And then it makes it feel less achievable for them rather than more achievable. And I know it can feel like you are giving them loads of value when you're giving these kinds of tips, but it might not be that valuable to them because they still are not quite at the point where they're ready for those tips. 

 

The people who unsubscribe were probably never going to buy from you in the first place. 

They might not be your ideal client or they might not be that eager to solve the problem that your offer or that your tips are helping them to solve.

 

Create a launch-specific lead magnet.

he last point I want to make is you mentioned that this is a good opportunity to nurture them for a launch rather than giving daily tips to nurture them. Could you create a launch-specific lead magnet? So I teach this concept in depth inside Launch Magic, this concept of a lead magnet that is very specific just to one offer, just to a launch, rather than to generally grow your email list. And essentially it's not about giving them tips rather it is about meeting them where they are at and bridging the gap between where they are right now and where they need to be to be ready to buy that particular offer. It's not about getting lots of subscribers onto your email list.

It's not going to be the shiny amazingly magnet that gets you thousands and thousands and thousands of subscribers most of the time, but it's about getting you those right subscribers and nurturing them to buy from you when you open doors on the launch. 

It's a very common challenge and I wouldn't be too concerned about it because it is normal to have a number of unsubscribes, but there are a couple of those little tweaks that you can implement to see if that makes any kind of change and always keep an eye on it. Keep it, look at it over time, test different things and see if you can notice any trends from the different things that you have.

 

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