Learn to Embrace Unsubscribes

Every time I send out an issue of The Edge, I probably have 10-15 people unsubscribe from my list. Sometimes, a little higher.

Sure, I wish it didn’t happen. Ideally, every person who receives this newsletter would be 100% into it, read every word I write, and never unsubscribe. But…

That’s not realistic. And I never let it be a reason why I would fail to communicate to you. I send this newsletter 3 times per week because this is how I make being an email subscriber valuable. I do it knowing that even this very issue you’re reading right now is going to, for one reason or the other, cause roughly 15 of you to leave my email list.

On the Convince & Convert blog, there was a simple blog post: 5 Reasons To Embrace Email Unsubscribes

As the post correctly points out, list size is a false metric.

Lot of marketing types focus quite a bit on the SIZE of their list. I’ve been to internet marketing gatherings where a few have even bragged about it (silly people). But, the fact remains… it doesn’t matter how big your email list is.

Really, the only thing that matters is how much attention they are paying to you. The average number of OPENS you get on your emails is the true size of your email list. THAT’S all that really matters.

That blog post says you should embrace unsubscribes. That might be a little overstated. I mean, it isn’t as if we’re sitting around hoping for it now, are we? But, it is true that it shouldn’t be a source of concern.

When people unsubscribe, let’s look at the positive aspects of this:

1. Your email list is now less bloated. Prune them off and lower your email marketing bill.

2. Less bloat means your email metrics will be better.

3. The people who are still there are more likely to be people who actually care to be there. Which means you’re not bothering people.

Unsubscribes can be positive, then. Not only that, it is an opportunity to LEARN.

See, you should be tracking unsubscribes as a statistic and you treat it as an inverse statistic. Meaning… the lower the stat is, the better you’re doing. You’re going to have an average. As I said, I tend to average around 15 unsubscribes every time I email out an issue of The Edge. Now, if I suddenly got an above average number of unsubscribes, that gives me a data point. I can consider…

• Is that topic actually helpful or interesting? Maybe it was a poor match.

• Is my lead source not very good? Perhaps my lead magnet isn’t attracting the right kinds of people?

• Am I emailing too often?

You’ve got a lot of different numbers you can look at on your proverbial business dashboard. And one of them is that number of unsubscribes.

Don’t fear it. It is a fact of life. But, track it and use it as an opportunity to learn.