7 Email Marketing Sins Are Making Your Customers Unsubscribe – How to Rebuild Trust? [Part I]

Are people unsubscribing from your email marketing lists soon after they are signing up for the newsletters? It’s not time to worry just yet! There are common reasons why subscribers and prospective customers want to unsubscribe, and you are not alone. And there are effective strategies too, to woo and win back customers’ trust, to rebuild customer relationships, and sell to those customers again.

Why customers are unsubscribing from your email list?

Most common reasons why customers and subscribers are leaving you could be one or more of the following:

1. Sending too many emails

Are you sending them too many emails? Too-much frequency of emailing can repel your subscribers away and persuade them to go off the grid and unsubscribe from the list. The best way to avoid this and gain the trust of customers is to let them choose how often they wish to receive offers, updates, tips and other type of content. You can do that by setting up a “subscription center”.

2. You’re not emailing them enough

Another side of the issue is when marketers are not sending enough emails – too few emails will disappoint customers and when they are not receiving enough email or information they close the deal and unsubscribe. One way to keep your customers engaged and interested is to maintain a fixed schedule and to automate emails at regular intervals with relevant, follow-up emails. You can simply create drip engagement email campaigns with the right offers such as whitepapers, ebooks, webinar invitations, or even video or other content to build up their interest.

3. Your emails are not relevant enough

This is one of the most common mistakes that drive targeted audience away. If you are sending information to the wrong segments, no matter how well-structured and research-backed they are, those emails are of no significance to the reader and are easily skipped over. Eventually, they unsubscribe from your email list. The only way to prevent them from unsubscribing from the list is to send the right message and content to the right people, at the right time. Use a marketing automation platform to segment, schedule and ensure timely delivery of emails to the targeted segment.

4. Your emails do not open properly on mobile devices

Studies point to the fact that emails that are not quite mobile optimized, do not load properly or do not look good on mobile devices, can be trashed, also leading recipients to unsubscribe. Make sure you are using responsive email templates that adjust the mail content, look and feel of the email according to the screen size and resolution of the devices. ShowMeLeads has plenty of responsive email templates for diverse industries, themes and purposes of campaigns – talk to us at (408) 502 6765 or at services@showmeleads.com to check those out.

5. Repeated content or promotions

Are you sending repeated content or the same offers to your customers? Especially if you are sending the email to those who have already bought the same product, the offer will no longer be useful for them and frequently, they will find your mails redundant and too generic. Over time, repeated emails may eventually infuriate your customers, making them unsubscribe from your list. To avoid this mistake, add customers who have already purchased to a different segment or list, and schedule your promotional emails for the product to other segments. For existing buyers, you can create mails containing demo videos to improve the usability, list if related products and accessories, feedback emails to ask them to rate and share the experience etc.

6. Emails that are too long

Are your email newsletters too long to hold the attention span? With attention spans that steadily plummet while we are browsing sites, checking mails or scrolling through social channels, longer than usual emails can exhaust our attention span far earlier than you might expect. That’s why .gif images or video shorts may win your consumers more than long email content, that too without any paragraph breaks, subheads, bullets or images in between. Soon they lose interest in long, tedious emails and decide to leave the list.  One smarter technique is to trim excess, redundant, unnecessary and irrelevant portions and include relevant, attention-grabbing images in between paragraphs. If the content is too long and useful, then create a small guide for your consumers and link it for recipients to download from the email with a call to action pitch.

7. Sending same content available online

If you are circulating and aggregating the same content you have already published, whether on your blog or on your site, then chances are that your recipients will find nothing valuable or useful in your email newsletters. The moment your customers find your newsletters cannot offer them new updates, content, stories or offers that they cannot find while visiting your site, blog or social channels, they will leave. The basic rule is to create exclusive content for newsletters that they will not find on your website. For example, your site already has all the price lists and product lists that your customers do not expect to find in your newsletters. Instead, include news on your upcoming product releases and latest launches, or include an exclusive coupon code for your email subscribers. Give them reasons to stay hooked and look forward to your next email, instead of choosing to unsubscribing from the list.

These are the kinds of things that are causing your subscribers to want to opt out of your email marketing campaigns. In part II, we’ll show you the types of mails that will help you to regain your customers’ trust and turn them into buyers.