What’s your biggest fear in email newsletters and marketing?

— that people won’t like what you write?
— that they won’t open your emails?
— will they write you and criticize your point of view?

Each of these issues can be taken care of with planning, training and knowing how to handle feedback.

If they don’t like what you write, they are not your target audience. The same applies to those who don’t open your emails – or your subject line needs work, which is more likely.

If they take the time to write back for any reason, we need to see that as a positive win! A place to grow from.

What we do need to pay attention to is when people unsubscribe.

Well, I’ve got Good News and Bad News.

The good news is having people unsubscribe is not bad news!

There really is no bad news – as long as the unsubscribe rate is low.

To figure out why people are unsubscribing from your emails, start by looking at the numbers.

The best email campaigns have an unsubscribe rate of less than 2%.

Anything above that 2% is likely telling you any of the following:

• You are marketing to the wrong people.
• Sending emails too frequently (clogging their inbox)
• Sending emails infrequently (they don’t remember you and unsubscribe.)
• You are not delivering quality content.

I usually get 1 to 2 unsubscribers when I send out these North Star newsletters. (You won’t be one of them, will you?!) I typically check to see their reasons and if they have been reading my emails.

Recently, an unsubscriber was someone I know. The last time I spoke to her was in 2018 during a website consultation call, so it had been a few years.

I could see she had been opening my emails for some time, and then POOF, she unsubscribed.

One thought came to mind.

Can I let her leave without learning why?

So here is what I did after embracing my Wonder Woman mindset.

I wrote her a personal email directly from my Gmail account. It went like this:

Hi Christine (not her real name,)

Gosh! So much has happened since I last talked to you. Could it be four years now? I hope your circle of friends and family have not been affected by COVID. We’ve been fortunate but I know it has been scary for many.

I saw that you unsubscribed from my email list. No worries there! But as I continue to grow my company, your feedback about why you unsubscribed would be helpful.

I would love to know how I can improve or provide topics that business owners like you would love to learn more about. If you could take a moment to reply to this email, I would greatly appreciate it.

I hope to see you on social media!

Janice

The next time someone unsubscribes from your list, look to see who they are. Your email service provider will tell you the source of their original signup, what their engagement and open rates are and if you sell anything through your email marketing, it will tell you of any purchases they made.

Also, look at the reason they gave when they unsubscribed. Now, don’t get upset here. People said it is “spammy content” even when the email was simply a holiday greeting!

See if there is anything you can glean from this activity. If it is someone you know, email them and ask. Assure them that you won’t bug them, but you would like to know what happened. (see the example above)

The biggest thing is to take action. You are invested in your business and you want it to grow. Initiate their help.

Trust that they will remember you.