How to Handle Unsubscriber Notifications
Hopefully, you’re aware of the benefits of offering email subscriptions to your blog, and you’re prioritizing the value of subscribers over raw traffic counts. Your subscribers are the A in your Audience — your feed subscriber counts are so much more important than hits and pageviews, they should be THE metric on your behind-the-screens radar.
Subscribers represent your blog’s most significant impact — these are the people sitting in your front-row — they are the most likely readers to purchase your books, hire you for offline services, and generally co-create the important conversation that originates from your blog posts. They are also individuals who have voluntarily opted to invest in your mission by paying on-going attention to your work.
Readers who decide to ditch their subscription to your blog represent an important opportunity for you to improve your content.
How do you respond to your unsubscribers?
I received an email from a fellow spiritually-focused blogger who has been enjoying subscriber growth over the past few months — YEAH! — but…
He writes:
I got my first unsubscriber notification today. I’m not THAT broken up about it… Do you have any suggestions for how to gently ask why they’ve unsubscribed? I don’t even know where to start!
You’ve probably noticed that old school web sites with more traditional ezine/email newsletter list management features have an automated response to your removing your address from their list. These dinosaurs of web marketing irritate me sometimes because, even with CAN-SPAM laws dictating that visible unsubscribe options are now mandatory, they often lead you through hoops that are several clicks and actions away from “simple” removal.
One of the absolute best features of Feedburner’s Email Subscription Service — besides the infinitely gorgeous price tag of $0 — is the one-click unsubscribe option they provide for your readers. The old school email marketing crowd pays a lot of money for every little feature and function — ridiculous — and I’ve yet to run across an Aweber or Autocontactor or 1ShoppingCart unsubscribe link that didn’t lead to several hoops and rings of fire.
You don’t need readers who don’t want to read you.
Let’s face it — if someone wants to unsubscribe from your list, you should make it easy for him! Let him go, yes. But take a moment to learn what you can from it, whenever possible.
I despise being forced to recall the exact email address I used to subscribe, be tricked into clicking the proper radio buttons to actually remove myself from a publisher’s list or else continue receiving content because I couldn’t provide even MORE personal information… The worst are the guys who expect you to enter a password to unsubscribe — you’ve got to be kidding me… Not only is this basically illegal, it annoys your readers, and increases their resolve to free themselves from your clutches.
The one old school autoresponder feature that’s truly more powerful than Feedburner’s unsubscription screens is an automated feedback collection form, where your un-subscriber can take a moment to tell you WHY he wants off your list.
But, if you’re doing your job — creating quality original content consistent with what you’ve promised to provide — you should see very few unsubscribe notifications at all.
(Note: if you’re using Feedburner, make sure you have “unsub” notifications turned on, so you receive an email when someone leaves your list.)
Knowing WHY someone has become uninterested in following your blog can provide you with priceless insight into how to capture and keep your readers. Because these opportunities are few and far between, it’s relatively simple to address them manually.
How I approach an unsubscribe notification:
I usually just send a BRIEF, genuine email, politely and sincerely asking for feedback about why the reader has decided to go. Nothing too canned — after you send a few, you may perfect just the right word choice and can use it as your standard with a quick copy and paste.
I always keep a copy of Frequent Responses handy to use as templates.
Just ask something along the lines of “Hey, I noticed you decided to unsubscribe from My Cool Blog. I hate to see you go — would you give me some feedback in the spirit of helping me improve the content? Was there something you’d hoped to find that you didn’t?”
Be brief, genuinely curious — just ask!
Don’t jump to conclusions or be on the defensive — I had several unsubs in a row one day and discovered, after emailing them in a minor panic/ pout, that they were responding to an explanation of Feeds/RSS that I had posted — they took MY advice about ditching email subscriptions…
- Many people trade in the email subs for the feed when they discover newsreaders.
- Some people just go on subscription gutting rampages (I had one of those last week).
- Some people change email addresses, or move certain subscriptions to different addresses as a way of managing their email.
You never know until you ask — don’t assume the worst.
Generally, you can expect the following responses to your request for feedback:
- No response at all — they may be sick of receiving email from you, remember? That still IS the most likely possibility. If your reader is over you, or simply not the confrontational type, he’ll just ignore you.
- The lame excuse — the #1 actual honest-to-god reply you’ll receive will be a mumbling “Too much email,” or some variation of “Sorry, nothing personal.”
- The one you actually want — a kick in the gut criticism/ valid constructive slam
I have yet to receive an actual critique or feedback email from anyone who unsubscribed in a huff AND was willing to talk about it — on Shift Your Spirits — but I have seen this type of solicited feedback a lot on business client sites — when you can get them out of your readers, they provide valuable insights you can use to improve.
Marketers say there is no such thing as a failure — only information about what doesn’t work.
Chances are, the most useful feedback will confirm your awareness of an existing weakness — like “You’re publishing too much, too frequently.” Bloggers generally post more frequently than conventional ezines. Or, you may have already made a conscious decision to post something controversial, knowing that you could lose readers over it.
I continue to be absolutely shocked by the things that offend my readers’ sensibilities — the piddliest little thing, sometimes, from my perspective — while the stink bombs I’m just SURE I’ve dropped go over with little notice or fanfare. Forget guessing — take the opportunity whenever you can to hear it from them directly.
Do you have a great suggestion for a nice brief follow-up email that we could all use? Please leave it in the comments below.
Unverifieds
Something else you might want to consider, in addition to unsubscribes, are UNVERIFIEDS. Every month or so I go through my email subscriber list in Feedburner and look for the unverifieds. These are people who missed the confirmation email. They genuinely wanted to read your articles and have never received them.
I’d say, in a way, unverifieds should be given priority in list management. I’m always glad when I send these explanations out. Many people don’t understand the opt-in follow-up protocol. I started manually sending out a helpful, friendly explanation to these chronically unverified email addresses after I noticed that one reader kept faithfully trying to subscribe each month, yet remaining unverified.
It’s hard to remember sometimes, if you’re seriously web savvy, that there are more people who are NOT familiar with web surfing, than are… The number of new web virgins continues to grow — there are tons of people out there who may encounter YOUR opt-in confirmation process as their first.
Once he properly confirmed and moved to Active status, I deleted his previous attempts from my list. For any bounces or delivery notices I receive after emailing the unverifieds, I delete the address. After so many attempts, Feedburner will clean up your list automatically.
I DO re-use a friendly canned email explaining the opt-in process, for those who get stuck in the limbo of Unverified.
Here’s the email I send:
Subject line: Are You Having Trouble Subscribing to Shift Your Spirits?
Hey there! This is Slade from Shift Your Spirits.
I noticed that your email address shows up on my subscriber list multiple times — but it shows that your email address is “unverified .”
Unverified means you entered your email address initially, to sign up, but that the confirmation link has never been activated.
You should receive a follow-up email immediately after you sign up asking you to confirm your subscription, by clicking on a link.
Try checking your SPAM or Junk folder to see if these confirmation emails are getting flagged as SPAM. I haven’t heard of anybody having any trouble receiving Feedburner Emails, but since it has come to my attention, I thought I’d write and ask you about it.
I hate to think you’re out there wondering why you’ve never received the new articles by email!
If you want to try again, rather than hunting through old email folders:
1. Sign Up
Subscribe to Shift Your Spirits by Email
2. Watch for the confirmation email that immediately follows and click the confirm link
Slade Roberson is an intuitive counselor, ATP®, professional blogger, and the author of Shift Your Spirits, Automatic Intuitive Response, and the PageCoach Problogging Tutorial Series. Slade on Blogging shares behind-the-screens internet marketing, self-publishing, and blogging strategies with other personal development writers, coaches, and healing arts practitioners.
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