5 Reasons Why Users Unsubscribe to Email Newsletters

Email marketing to your subscriber list can be very effective in driving sales, but not if your customers unsubscribe for reasons that could easily be fixed.

Email is arguably one of the most effective platforms on which to promote a product, service and/or brand. According to an Experian study, email is 20x more cost-effective than traditional forms of advertising. That alone should be reason enough to make email part of your business’s overall marketing strategy. But email marketing only works if recipients follow your newsletter.

Unrecognizable From Address

If the recipient doesn’t recognize who you are, there’s a good chance that they will unsubscribe to your newsletter. Far too many emails today now contain viruses and other malicious software or code, making recipients hesitant to open messages from unknown senders. To prevent this from happening, use a clear “from address” that reflects your business or brand.

Emails are Too Long

Don’t make the mistake of creating long, drawn-out emails. Studies have shown that recipients are less likely to read long emails, which may subsequently cause them to unsubscribe. So, what’s the best length for a marketing email? If you asked ten different digital marketing experts, you would probably get ten different answers. However, maintaining a word count of no more than 750 seems to work well for most messages.

Emails aren’t Personalized

Personalizing your marketing emails can prove invaluable in creating a stronger connection with the recipient and ultimately increasing your chance of scoring a sale or conversion. Assuming you know the recipient’s name, you can use “tokens” to automatically include his or her name in your emails. Personalized emails have been shown to generate six times more transactions than generic emails, according to a study cited by MarketingLand.

Irrelevant Content

You have to think of your target audience and what they are expecting to read when creating your marketing emails. If you send irrelevant content that doesn’t pertain to their likes or interest, some recipients may click the unsubscribe button, never to be seen or heard from again.

Recipients Didn’t Sign Up for Your Newsletter

One of the most common reasons why users unsubscribe to newsletters is because they never signed up for them in the first place. Some business owners may purchase lists of email addresses instead of collecting the addresses by hand. Unfortunately, you really don’t know how these addresses were collected. They could have been collected using automated software, in which case the recipient didn’t sign up for them. The bottom line is that you should avoid paying for email lists and instead build your own list.