A while back I did a post about changing your unsubscribe process.  I thought it was about time I revisited it to look in a bit more depth.

The unsubscribe process is usually considered a negative thing and because of this, it doesn’t get the attention it deserves.  The unsubscribe process isn’t by any means a negative thing – who wants to speak to someone who doesn’t want to listen?

Obviously, when it comes to reasons why people are unsubscribing, it can be a lot less straight forward than that.  Several factors can play a part in a recipients decision to unsubscribe, not just because they don’t want to receive messages from you any more.  This is where the preference centre comes in.

Now for those who don’t know what I’m talking about, instead of having a straight link that instantly unsubscribes your recipient, you give them the chance to change what emails they receive from you and how often.

As this new year is bringing financial concerns to companies it is only right to think about how to increase your return on investment within email marketing; a preference centre is a great way to do this.

The first obvious advantage of these (which I outlined in my old post) is the chance to stop an unsubscribe from unsubscribing.  You can give them the option to choose the frequency of the emails they receive to you as well as choose which type of emails they want from you.  Some recipients may just be sick of you sending articles and tips and solely want sales and promotional material.  With a preference centre, you can achieve this.

This has a positive knock on effect to your campaigns as well.  By giving your subscriber the choice, you can then just send them emails which they will find relevant – something which I keep banging on about.

So you can see that the emails you’re sending will continually be going to engaged subscribers who are receiving just what they want to receive.  Already you can see the ROI positives from this; a reduction in unwanted emails and an audience which is engaged and receiving relevant emails.

One final advantage to this is using the preference centre as a marketing research tool.  It gives you an insite into what your recipients are interested in.  It could also be used as another indicator of what makes your recipient react – be it in this case negatively.

Let’s say you send out a campaign and see an unusually high change of preferences after that campaign, you know that something in there wasn’t to your subscribers liking.  So you can learn from your mistakes whilst not losing that person.

From some of the reading I have done recently, a lot of email marketers are still ignoring the unsubscribe process.  As I have mentioned previously, no aspect of email marketing such ever be ignored.  If these marketers were more pro-active towards unsubscribe processes, they may have found out themselves that they could have turned the negative of unsubscribing into a useful and ultimately positive preference centre.

Related Reading

Opt Down Not out
Does your opt out process offer options to your subscribers?
Really Bad Unsubscribe Processes
Is your Unsubscribe process working for, or against, you?
Participating In Email Channel – Start with your Preference Centre

Tags

email marketing strategy | unsubscribe link

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.