Six Tips for Reducing "Unsubscribers"

Are you looking for tips on how to reduce the number of people choosing to "Unsubscribe" from your organization's publications/promotional offers? Are you weighing the differences in consumer receptivity to periodic informational emails vs. sweepstakes offers?

In a recent MediaPost Email Insider column, Melinda Krueger (director of email marketing at OgilvyOne) provided six (6) tips to help organizations and brands reduce the number of "unsubscribes":

1. Provide value in the first place. So easy to say, so difficult to achieve, given the time and budget constraints faced by most email departments
2. Give opt-ins an option to "opt down" or receive less frequent email
3. Ask why the recipient is opting out and do something about frequent complaints
4. View your opt-out trends by campaign. At the end of the year, look at those campaigns with the highest opt-out rates and see which messages insipired the most drop-outs.
5. View your opt-out rates in relation to frequency. Did more frequent mailings have subscribers bailing out?
6. View your opt-outs by source. Did that co-reg campaign, sweepstakes, or fill-in-the-blank generate a lot of disinterested subscribers?

If all these suggestions fail, always consider building a loyalty system (which many professional organizations now offer), to induce consumers to be more receptive to periodic emails and other pieces of communication.