What To Do After Someone Unsubscribes From Your Email Newsletter

A month or two ago, I mentioned that my email was ‘hacked’. One of my bank cards was as well.

This is the short version of what happened

• Hacker signed me up for thousands of email lists

• Inbox got flooded with emails

• Hacker hoped I wouldn’t notice the 1 email that confirmed a real transaction

• I not only noticed it, but my bank’s cyber security system did as well

• The asshat hacker never got what s/he was after

(For the record, the asshat tried to buy the new iPhone.)

Anyway, I’ve been cleaning up and triaging my inbox for the better part of a month now and, as you might imagine, that’s involved unsubscribing from a lot of email lists.

While undergoing this process, I was exposed to dozens of variations of the unsubscribe process. Some were good, others were horrible, most were meh.

Now, I don’t want to bury the lead any further because you are busy and have things to do, so here’s my answer to what you should do after someone unsubscribes from your email newsletter.

ASK THEM WHY THEY UNSUBSCRIBED.

FWIW, Mailchimp’s boilerplate unsubscribe process does a good job at that this. In fact, it was the best of all the standard unsubscribe processes I encountered.

Here’s what Mailchimp’s unsubscribe looks like:

In my case, the second radio button was the reason I was unsubscribing. Obviously.

Okay, there were 2 reason Mailchimp’s unsubscribe process was the best:

1. When I clicked ‘unsubscribe’ in the email, I was immediately unsubscribed. I wasn’t redirected to a landing page to confirm my unsubscription.

2. On the unsubscribe confirmation page, I got the opportunity to leave feedback (image above) and no option was pre-selected for me.

This all can seem like small potatoes, but it isn’t.

Here’s why.

Too many email marketing services brought me to a landing page where I had to choose a reason I was unsubscribing

And what’s worse?

They often had a reason pre-selected for me.

Do you think I took the time to select the real reason I was unsubscribing?

No. No way.

Knowing WHY people unsubscribe is important. It can help you understand so much about your database of contacts. But the feedback process has to be 100% voluntary and you can’t pre-fill answers for people because most won’t take the time to provide you with the correct reason.

Finally (and I realise I sound like a broken record here), a subscriber isn’t a hostage. They shouldn’t need to give you feedback for unsubscribing as if they were engaged in some shady quid pro quo.

Tactics like that are annoying and will get you terrible results and feedback for your CRM.

Okay, that’s it for this week, friends. Hope it was helpful.

Adios,Andrew