Improve The Unsubscribe Rate On Your IT Newsletter By Earning Your Subscriber’s Loyalty

A challenge you will inevitably face when nurturing your IT company’s contact list is the constant battle to stop your list from churning. As a B2B company, you will unintentionally lose subscribers as people vacate positions and change email addresses. In addition to this, each time someone intentionally unsubscribes from your list and exits your funnel it decreases your overall conversion even more than what should naturally occur.

If this happens too often, you could end up losing more subscribers than you gain in a given period of time (making your funnel shrink instead of grow). It is important to take measures to keep your subscribers happy and engaged, all while avoiding common mistakes that may make them have second thoughts about you or your company.

This is something that we are constantly looking to improve on as we build our audience here on MSP Growth Hacks and help MSPs do the same. To us, a successful weekly newsletter is not always about how many opens we receive and how much engagement it produces. As our audience has grown, we have now shifted a lot of our focus towards retaining those subscribers with every email and earning their attention (and retention) each and every week.

Here are a few points of emphasis to limit your list churn and keep unsubscribe rates low:

Opt-In Collateral

If you feel as though your unsubscribe rate is high, take a look at the opt-in collateral that you use to register new contacts. Giving away something of value is important for your opt-in rate, but sometimes it can lead to a high churn while nurturing your list. Think about a time that you have entered your contact information to win a car or vacation sweepstakes but never even bothered to take notice of the company hosting the contest. This is why you should never over-compensate your subscribers for joining your list. Doing so will likely yield a high amount of irrelevant contacts that churn at an accelerated pace.

Email Frequency

The frequency of your emails is one of the largest contributing factors to your unsubscribe rate. Sending too many emails in a short period of time will be off-putting to some subscribers and will cause them to immediately opt-out (regardless of the quality of your content). I would recommend limiting your communication to once a week unless you have explicit permission up-front for daily communication. Think about how long it would take a subscriber to consume 100% of your email and the links therein and be realistic about how the average subscriber would be willing to contribute this amount of time.

Content Quality

Another reason to properly pace your emails is for the purpose of quality. It can be difficult to produce content that has significant value on a daily basis. When your email content is of poor quality (or irrelevant to your subscribers) it will cause them to leave your list. For example, if someone opts in to your list to receive updates about security threats, but all they get is marketing fluff and content about other offerings, they are probably not going to stick around. Be sure to always give your audience exactly what they signed up for.

List Segmentation

One way to please everyone on your list all the time is through the use of segmentation. As your list grows, you will notice that not every contact has the same precise interests. They will often be from different industries with different titles and thus varying responsibilities. Instead of sending out one generic email to all, you can segment your list and customize your emails to better suit the interest of each one. This will equate to more work each week scheduling content, but it is one of the most effective tactics in nurturing an IT lead list and reducing churn. Most list management platforms offer the ability to segment your list as a native feature, making this tactic simple to execute.

Exit Survey

When members of your list do choose to unsubscribe, always be sure to prompt them with an exit survey asking them why they are leaving. Getting feedback from your list will allow you to make changes that might have a positive impact on reducing your churn rate. For example, if all of your unsubscribes claim that the email frequency is too often, then you may want to dial it back for a short period of time and see the effect it has on your attrition rate.