7 Reasons Your Email Subscriber Lists are Shrinking & How You Can Stop it

1. High Frequency
   One of the most common reasons people unsubscribe from emails is that they receive too many of them over a given period of time. It’s one thing to display your enthusiasm for the company’s products or services and another to bombard your customers with that on a daily basis through email. It is one of the quickest ways to have your emails sent to the spam folder and then unsubscribed from altogether. The best way to combat this is to only send out emails periodically, on a set basis, or when there is something important with the company going on that you feel your customers should know about. Use simple split testing to find out the perfect frequency you should be sending out emails.
2. No Personalisation
   Another common reason why people unsubscribe from emails is that they’re obviously bulk emails/templates. Customers see them as a typical spam message, the kind that gets sent to their inbox every day, and as a result it leads to people unsubscribing. Any company can send out emails that are completely unedited templates, and many do. These companies won’t find much success in digital marketing because they aren’t showing customers that they truly care about them or their business.You can easily combat this by making emails more personal. Two ways to make them more personal is to segment the customer database in a way that allows you to send specific customers emails with relevant products or services. The simplest way is to use the customer’s first name in the subject line and even throughout the email too.
3. No Relevance
   It is so important that the emails you are sending customers are relevant to their needs and preferences, not just for marketing, but for GDPR compliance too. If you aren’t, the customer is going to be wondering why on earth you’re wasting their time. Find out what the customers’ interests are and tailor emails to them. Set up your CRM software to take past purchase data and feed it into your transactional service emails as upselling and cross-selling. This method has been used successfully by Amazon for years and years—and look where they are now.
4. Unsolicited
   If you obtained the email contacts from a third party it could be a reason as to why people are unsubscribing from your email list: they never wanted them in the first place. Unsolicited emails are a great way to get customers turned off to your product or service, because they will simply look at the emails as spam and wonder how you got their information to begin with. Instead of buying email lists from third parties, stay organic, and grow your email base from within. Ask for customers’ emails when they make purchases and whether or not they would like to subscribe to an email list. That way you will have customers that actually want to read your emails as opposed to ones who never asked to receive them in the first place, even if you know you got them from a GDPR compliant source.
5. Shoddy Email Basics
   Along with unsolicited emails, another common theme for an uptick in people unsubscribing from emails is that they aren’t properly professional or business-like. Ever get an email that’s clearly almost completely made up of images, and looks broken if the client won’t load them? It makes your customers hesitate because they don’t really know if they should or not. Emails that are full of grammatical errors or are the wrong kind of personal for your audience are also surefire ways of getting customers to unsubscribe. Put yourself in the customers’ shoes and ask yourself if you would want to read the email about to be sent out. Have others help with proofreading and editing to make sure your company stands apart as one that is professional.
6. The ABC’s
   One of the most memorable scenes in 80’s film occurs in Glengarry Glen Ross, where Alec Baldwin delivers the infamous “Always Be Closing” speech. It’s an interesting window into high-pressure sales, and while it works on a used car lot, it’s not the best idea for email marketing. You don’t want to come across as a slimy sleaze-ball who doesn’t care about anything other than sales, sales, sales. Something as simple as recognizing a customer’s birthday will go a long way to building a close relationship and greater loyalty over time. You don’t have to try to sell something to customers in every email, as it becomes off-putting when customers are always getting them in their inboxes.
7. Uninspiring
   Similar to the previous reason, another type of email you want to avoid is one that is always uninspiring or boring. You don’t want to send out the same bland email every couple of weeks or so as customers will also find them off-putting over time and will direct them straight to the spam folder. Variety is key. Think outside of the box and look for suggestions from both inside and outside of the company for ways in which to reach customers through email. Make sure keep it relevant, though, as going too far outside of the box will lead customers astray as well!

So there you have it: all you have to do is stick to these seven principles and your subscribers list will be growing again in no time. And if that’s till not enough—you want to perfect your email game even more—why not check out even more tips here?