At the beginning of each year, I kick off an event that I like to call Spring Cleaning of My Inbox (yes, I realize it’s not spring). Instead of deleting dozens of emails that I don’t read each day, I get to the root of the problem.
Every time I do this, I worry a little about my email karma. Are the people on Capterra’s email list doing the same thing? Will I come into the office tomorrow morning and see that we only have 3 people on our email list?
And each time, I come to the same conclusion: there are legitimate reasons to unsubscribe. If we’re not committing any of the following offenses, there’s nothing to worry about:
Deception
When I checked my email this morning, the first thing I noticed was a message with the subject line “Reminder: You Are Registered for XXX Webinar Today.” I checked my calendar. Nothing. I don’t remember registering for a webinar. When I read the email more closely, I realized that I had, in fact, *not registered for the webinar. The body of the message explained that the company thought I’d be really interested in their webinar and had a call to action for me to register. So basically… they lied. Unsubscribe.
Harassment
Hey, did you know we’re running a promo this month? How about now? Do you know about our promo now? What about now? Gah! Unsubscribe. I don’t need to receive emails from you every day—unless you’re my mother; she can break the daily rule. Give your emails some room to breathe. There’s no right answer when it comes to how often you send emails, so think about your customers and what makes sense for them. And most importantly, if you’re seeing a lot of unsubscribes there’s a good chance there’s a problem.
Intrusion
Do you get emails from organizations you’ve never heard of before? Not to call anyone out, but I got an email yesterday from the [Insert Ethnic Group Here]-American Lawyers Association. I’m sure this is a lovely group of people, and I may or may not be a part of that ethnic group—but I’m definitely not a lawyer. Why are they emailing me? What benefit is there to either one of us? Unsubscribe.
Boredom
Dear Besa, womp womp womp womp womp womp womp. I don’t think I’ve ever received an email with that exact content, but a lot of them sure do read that way. B2B readers are busy. They get a lot of emails. Get to the point, make it a relevant point, and make it snappy. You don’t have to be a creative genius, but make it interesting. And if you’re not sure, send it my way. I’ll be happy to put it through my boredom tester.
One more thing…
I’ve also been unsubscribing from emails that look like my 3-year-old daughter designed them. I’m not saying Steve Jobs has to rise from the dead to design your email, but if you can’t do HTML, then maybe you shouldn’t be doing it. Sending a simple, text email that’s engaging, helpful and grammatically correct works wonders.
What makes you unsubscribe from emails?