How to Learn From Unsubscribes

02/15/22 • 33 min

4 Listeners

Rejection is a terrible feeling. Especially when you’re pouring everything into a business and yearning for the approval of a new audience. But there are things to learn from every negative in life, and unsubscribes are no different.

So if you’re feeling down about your unsubscribes, consider this: the unsubscribe button is an automated list-cleaner, allowing subscribers the option to opt-out themselves, saving you the hassle of removing them manually when your deliverability starts to wane. And by implementing tools like exit surveys, you’re turning that unsubscribe into an invaluable insight.

Not to mention, unsubscribes are an unavoidable fact of email marketing. As our lives change, so do our email preferences. Plus, with a new feature from ConvertKit, you can send every unsubscriber a survey on their way out the door. While responses are never an exact science, there’s knowledge to be gained from every answer.

In this episode, Alyssa and Melissa discuss why an unsubscribe option is a win-win, what you can learn from every exit survey, how not to position your unsubscribe option, and why trying your best to avoid them can turn a minor loss into an email catastrophe.

Key Takeaways

[04:47] - Legally, all bulk emails are required to have an unsubscribe button, and morally, including an unsubscribe option is respectful to everyone.
[08:47] - Don’t make the unsubscribe button difficult to find. If you make it extra complicated, subscribers may mark your emails as spam to speed up the process.
[11:48] - Subscribers removing themselves from your list is beneficial to you because unengaged subscribers will ultimately damage your deliverability.
[12:11] - Surveys are a great way to learn from unsubscribers, and a new feature from ConvertKit sends your unsubscribers an exit survey.
[17:09] - If someone responds, “I no longer want to receive these emails”, most likely, they’ve simply outgrown your services.
[20:26] - A lot of “I never signed up to receive these emails” responses indicate that you’ve been a victim of listbombing.
[23:00] - Responses that your content is “inappropriate” may mean subscribers are surprised by the content they’re receiving. Be transparent with your subscribers about what they’ll be receiving from the get-go.
[26:51] - Multiple responses that your content is “spam” is also concerning. It may be an email frequency issue.
[28:46] - When someone marks “other”, there’s not much to be learned. It may be that you’re sending too much, the emails are no longer relevant, or maybe that subscriber just didn’t feel like explaining themselves.

Quotes

[11:07] - “Deliverability is one of those things where you really do have to follow the rules or you’re going to end up putting yourself in a hole. There are not a lot of ways you can get around doing things you don’t want to do. You have to do the right thing or you’re not going to have success.” ~ @mel_lambert_

[11:51] - “Unsubscribes are not personal, but they’re beneficial to both the subscriber and you. If someone doesn’t want to be on your email list, you don’t want them there. Having people on your list who don’t actually want to be there is guaranteed to damage your deliverability, ultimately hurting your ability to reach those people who do want to be on your list.” ~ @alyssa_dulin

[22:26] - “We’re here to help you reach the inbox and emailing people who didn’t sign up for your list is not going to get you there. Make sure that any list you’ve imported comes from sources where each individual opted in to receive emails from you specifically.” ~ @alyssa_dulin

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Key Takeaways

[04:47] - Legally, all bulk emails are required to have an unsubscribe button, and morally, including an unsubscribe option is respectful to everyone.
[08:47] - Don’t make the unsubscribe button difficult to find. If you make it extra complicated, subscribers may mark your emails as spam to speed up the process.
[11:48] - Subscribers removing themselves from your list is beneficial to you because unengaged subscribers will ultimately damage your deliverability.
[12:11] - Surveys are a great way to learn from unsubscribers, and a new feature from ConvertKit sends your unsubscribers an exit survey.
[17:09] - If someone responds, “I no longer want to receive these emails”, most likely, they’ve simply outgrown your services.
[20:26] - A lot of “I never signed up to receive these emails” responses indicate that you’ve been a victim of listbombing.
[23:00] - Responses that your content is “inappropriate” may mean subscribers are surprised by the content they’re receiving. Be transparent with your subscribers about what they’ll be receiving from the get-go.
[26:51] - Multiple responses that your content is “spam” is also concerning. It may be an email frequency issue.
[28:46] - When someone marks “other”, there’s not much to be learned. It may be that you’re sending too much, the emails are no longer relevant, or maybe that subscriber just didn’t feel like explaining themselves.

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Previous Episode

iOS 15’s Impact on Open Rates So Far

When change happens, many of us panic. The rules of yesterday no longer apply and our future feels uncertain. But not all changes are catastrophic. In fact, a few recent email updates may seem more dramatic than they actually are. Case and point: Apple’s new privacy changes.

Earlier in 2021, Apple announced an update that sent many senders stressing. Within Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection feature, pixels load automatically and recipients are unable to determine who’s actually opening their emails. For years, open rates have been a hallmark metric in the world of deliverability, but now that technology has turned the tables, what’s next for measuring email success?

In this episode, Alyssa and Melissa explain what the iOS 15 update really means for senders and subscribers, who’s impacted, where open rates are surprisingly still useful, and why Apple’s update is an email blessing in disguise.

Key Takeaways

[01:50] - Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection is a feature that automatically loads pixels in an email to prevent senders from collecting information about the receiver. As a result, it will always appear that subscribers are opening emails.
[05:56] - Who’s impacted? Any subscriber using an Apple device with iOS 15 installed who uses the Apple Mail app to manage their emails. Unfortunately, there’s no way to tell which subscribers fall into this category.
[07:48] - Since Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection was released, ConvertKit has seen open rates increase from 30% to 37%.
[11:14] - Even before the release of iOS 15, open rates were becoming less and less reliable. With this update, open rates are officially an email metric of the past.
[14:48] - It’s time for creators to move away from relying on open rates to determine email success and start focusing on increasing engagement.

Quotes

[05:43] - “An interesting effect of the Mail Privacy Protection is that a lot of senders aren’t going to be able to clean their list and make sure people are receiving what they want to receive the way that they could with accurate open rate data.” ~ @alyssa_dulin[14:51] - “It takes the pressure off. You don’t have to make [open rates] such a large part of your goal. Because if your goal is to make a sale, then maybe we shouldn’t be focused on just the open rate, maybe we should be focusing on that actual purchase.” ~ @mel_lambert_[15:46] - “Having that pulse on your open rate can tell you how your deliverability is doing and that’s really what open rates are good for these days, just that basic, ‘ok, I’m getting through the front door.’ But when you’re really focusing on what metrics are going to tell you, ‘Are you being successful? Is this message resonating? Did people read it?’, there are other things you need to be focusing on, like clicks, conversions, and replies.” ~ @alyssa_dulin

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It's now free to use ConvertKit with an audience of 1,000 subscribers or less! Start building your audience and reaching their inboxes: convertkit.com/pricing.

Next Episode

Email Behind the Scenes

1 Recommendations

Many creators know the ins and outs of authentication, spam traps, BIMI, and listbombing. And if you’ve been creating for a while, you probably understand best practices for email strategy and creative tips for encouraging engagement. But what about the basics? Do you really understand what happens to your email after clicking “send”? Most creators don’t, and there’s a strong case for shifting that statistic.

When a tool helps you earn a living, it’s important to have a general understanding of how that tool works from a technical standpoint. Email is no different. The inner workings of email are complex and understanding those complexities helps you improve your strategy, ask better deliverability questions, and stay calm when unexpected issues arise. So if you think technical know-how is irrelevant and only for the computer programmers of our world, think again.

In this episode, Alyssa and Melissa discuss technical complexities behind clicking “send”, how inbox providers determine where your email lands, what ESPs like ConvertKit really can control, and why understanding email basics sets you up for deliverability success.

Key Takeaways

[03:22] - Knowledge is power, and when you’re a creator depending on email for your livelihood, having a technical understanding of email can only help you.
[03:57] - There are many steps between when an email is “sent” and when the email reaches the inbox of your subscriber. This back-and-forth conversation between the sender and the recipient is complicated but only lasts several seconds.
[06:34] - Once a message is sent, there are still things on the recipient’s end that can cause deliverability issues. Once sent, an email is either accepted (delivered) or rejected (bounced).
[10:32] - Once delivered, the mailbox provider has to consider several factors before determining where your email will land.
[18:48] - Once a message is delivered, you can track how subscribers react to that message through open tracking, although it’s important to look at open rate trends over time versus day-to-day open data.
[24:47] - Spam complaints are another great data point for senders searching for feedback.

Quotes

[26:48] - “Being able to break down every step of email, in general, will help highlight how it all works together because it’s definitely not a to and from, easy send, one-sided piece of mail. Even with the post office, when you take a letter to the post office, it’s not just being magically delivered instantaneously to that person, it’s going through a lot of work to get there.” ~ @mel_lambert_

[27:34] - “I think one of the best outcomes from this episode is at least maybe you have a better understanding of how complex email is and whenever you do have a subscriber bounce or someone says their message went to the spam folder, it will feel a little more like, ‘Ok, I get that there’s a lot of moving pieces going in here, let’s take a look, let’s not panic.’” ~ @alyssa_dulin

[28:13] - “Our whole goal at Convertkit is that you’re earning a living from your emails, from your products that you’re selling, things like that. So when something is the cornerstone to your business, you should have a general understanding of how it works.” ~ @alyssa_dulin

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