As a salon owner using e-mail marketing, no doubt you make a constant effort to grow your mailing list, but inevitably there are some “unsubscribes” after every send. Why do customers choose to unsubscribe from your tanning salon’s e-mail list? Here are the four most common reasons:
1. Your content is just not relevant.
Subscribers opt-in to your e-mails with certain expectations of the nature of content they want to receive. When these expectations aren’t met, they unsubscribe.
Get to know your subscribers and what information it is that they want to receive from you. A simple idea is to add a subscriber preference field to your subscription form – when the subscriber creates their profile, they can then indicate what they’re interested in: promotions, new products, industry news, etc. Alternatively, look at the reports of your past sends. What kind of content generated the highest click-through rates?
Before every send, ask yourself: If I were the recipient, would I want to read this e-mail? Or will it be easier to just delete it?
2. Your subscribers don’t know who the e-mail is from.
If a recipient doesn’t recognize the “From” name as the same sender whose e-mails they subscribed to, they unsubscribe. It’s always a good idea to keep your “From” name consistent, and preferable to send from your brand name, for instance Coca-Cola, New York Times or Siemens. The only exception is when you have a particular individual intrinsically associated with your brand who is well-recognized, such as Richard Branson with Virgin – or Seth Godin and Martha Stewart, who are brand names in themselves.
3. They’ve forgotten that they’ve subscribed.
Unfortunately, with the mass of e-mail communications we encounter daily, people do sometimes forget that they’ve subscribed to your e-mails. This could mean that you’re not sending e-mails regularly enough – if you’re only sending quarterly e-mails, chances are they’ve forgotten about your brand.
Regularly ask subscribers to update their profiles. It ensures that you always have their latest contact details, gives them the option of choosing what kind of communication they’d like to receive from you, and reminds them that they are subscribed to your list. As an added benefit, it can help you achieve greater relevancy in your e-mails.
4. You’re sending too many e-mails.
Bombarding clients with e-mails (especially repetitive e-mails) will achieve nothing more than annoying them. Look at the subscriber preferences they selected upon signing up – how regularly do they want to receive e-mails from you? (As suggested above, you can add these fields to your sign-up process.) If you don’t already ask this, consider adding options for daily, weekly, bi-weekly or monthly e-mails.
If your e-mails mostly push sales rather than offering industry or product information, your subscribers are likely to prefer monthly e-mails to daily e-mails. In a recent Marketing Sherpa survey, subscribers indicated that they’re more likely to unsubscribe from sales e-mails rather than e-mails that offer useful content.
While it is unavoidable to have people unsubscribe, taking heed of these factors can help you keep your subscribers happy – and reading.
Quattro Internet Solutions (Ltd) t/a GraphicMail’s hosted e-mail marketing solution is used by customers such as Cosmopolitan, SA Airlink, Europcar and the American Medical Association since 2002. It is available in eight languages and is represented by more than 16 offices globally. Follow GraphicMail on Twitter, Facebook and their e-mail marketing blog.
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