7 Reasons People are Unsubscribing from Your Email List

Are your email open rates down? If so, there’s probably a reason. People skip reading emails and unsubscribe from lists for lots of different reasons—but luckily, you can do something about it. Here are some of the most common reasons people unsubscribe from your list.

Your message isn’t relevant to them. There are lots of reasons people opt into email lists, but chances are you offered some benefit. If what you offered was a one-time thing—a white paper, for example—and they got the offer, they may decide staying on your list isn’t worth it. You have to continually prove your right to be there.

Insurance tends to be something people don’t really think about until they need it—especially if they’re on the consumer side. So it can be especially challenging for insurance marketers to keep their emails current.

It’s always smart to take a look at your content and see how relevant it is. Have you kept it interesting and exciting? Is it easily accessible to your audience? Are you talking about topics of immediate concern to them?

Your emails aren’t personalized. Personalizing your emails can boost your open rates as much as 29%, according to a study by ActiveTrail https://www.activetrail.com/marketingblog/marketingautomation_articles/13-incredibly-surprising-email-personalization-statistics/ and they increase click rates as much as 41% within an email. Making sure your emails are as personalized as possible using dynamically populated fields can really help.

Your emails aren’t targeted. Beyond that, however, your content has to be specifically relevant to that reader. How targeted is your email list? If you’re sending the same email to everyone, you may be missing chances to target. Consider how to divide up your list—by age, income level, profession, type of insurance they already own, whether they rent or buy—and tailoring marketing strategies according to those divisions.

You’re sending your emails too often. Approximately 67% of readers have unsubscribed from a mailing list because they send too often, according to a recent study by Litmus and Fluent https://litmus.com/lp/spam-complaints. But how much is too often? It can be tough to know. One option you have is to let customers specify how often they’d like to receive their emails. This gives customers a sense of control—and doesn’t leave you guessing.

Your emails aren’t easy to read on a phone. Most people check email on their phones. If your emails aren’t easily read and scannable on any size screen, you’re missing out on the majority of your audience.

Be careful of overly designed emails that are too image-heavy. If not properly mobile-optimized, these emails can look great on some screens and not so great on others. When in doubt, keep it simple.

They didn’t realize they signed up in the first place. GDPR rules require that you have a conscious opt-in feature that lets people specifically choose to opt into your email—but some companies still buy lists and add people under dubious circumstances. If you’ve done that in the past, it’s never too late to clean up your list. You can start by go through your list, delete inactive email addresses, and start over with a core group of clearly engaged addresses.

You’re too salesy. People don’t like being sold to all the time. Bear in mind that your emails should be giving something to them—not trying to get something from them. Always ask yourself on every campaign what it is you’re offering with these emails.

If you’re seeing a spike in unsubscribes, it’s a fixable problem. Take a close look at your content and whether it’s relevant to your audience. Personalize and segment your list as much as possible to boost relevancy. Weed inactive emails off your list, and clean up your list-building tactics if necessary. Hopefully, these steps will go a long way toward improving your open rates.

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