Top Reason for Email Unsubscibes or Delete

If you think your prospects are simply overwhelmed with inbox clutter and that's why they're not reading your lead nurturing emails, you may be suffering from disillusion.

You see, apparently marketers have under estimated their prospect's ability to process information to determine relevance—even amidst the clutter, noise and static in their inboxes.

Straight from the Marketing Sherpa Summit in Miami is this chart that shows the top reasons for defection from email marketing programs: Relevance and Frequency.

And, not just by a small margin.

• 58% say they unsubscribe or stop reading due to lack of relevance.
• 44% say you're bombarding them and they won't take it anymore!

In fact, a lack of attention paid due to inbox overload comes in 3rd at 31%. This means you have a really valid opportunity to build higher prospect engagement with over 2/3 of your opt-in list.

More than ever, it's important to put yourself in the shoes of your audience. And to segment. You've got to pinpoint relevance as closely as possible. I mean, 58% is pathetic, don't you think? We can do better than that.

Yes, I know. I can hear you groaning at the thought of all that extra work to construct more than one message and just blast and be done.

Here's the kicker...

You see that second reason? You're sending too many. So, if you segment you can focus on one group at a time. For example, if you have 4 segments, work on one each week. Reducing your communications to once a month won't hurt anything. In fact, with higher relevance and a more relaxed pace, you may just find your prospects are happier to hear from you.

Consider the wild idea that if you're producing really valuable content, your prospects may just seek you out when they have a need to know more. That means you're also gaining increased validity about interest levels.

It's one thing to have them click, look and leave because you initiated that activity during their busy day. It's quite another if they proactively come out to your website to see what's new and pull your content to them because they trust it to be relevant to them. Can you feel the difference?

In a complex B2B sale, it's a long cycle. Getting longer in this economy. Keeping in touch so they remember who you are is better when it's enjoyable and memorable for them.

That's a much better scenario that the one where you've trained them to learn your name so they can delete your message without consideration because they know it's going to be all about you, not them.

Before you continue to fatigue your audience, think about the upside of being the guest everyone wants to invite into their inbox—it's one of those do unto others things...you've got to put the relationship ahead of the message.

Comments

[Wayne Liew]

Most email marketers fail to put themselves into the shoes of their subscribers just like what you've mentioned. This is worse when marketers see their lists as ATM machines. If they fail to brand their business or themselves properly before their mails get into the inbox of their subscribers, the mails will be deleted before it was open. No question. 58% is a big number, especially during such a time where most lists are being created on an opt-in basis.

[Terrance Charles]

Ardath, well worth the read. I would thought that sending too many emails was the biggest problem... Thanks ;-)

[Ardath Albee]

@Wayne - thanks for your comment. I think you nail it with the ATM analogy. I hadn't thought of it that way! Good call.

@Terrance - thanks for chiming in. I think that it can also be a combination of both that play into losing attention. If a message is irrelevant and you receive the same message repeatedly, it doesn't become more relevant.