We often recommend email marketing to clients who are looking to increase revenues because it’s an incredibly cost effective strategy considering the outstanding results it can yield.

While you’re maybe paying $100 a month for your Email Service Provider (ESP), and possibly paying the fees of a company helping you out, you’re not paying per click. That’s the great thing about email – the ROI is hard to beat.

While there are many aspects in creating a successful Email Marketing campaign, one of the most effective tactics is to dramatically reduce your unsubscribe rates. After all, you worked so hard to get those prospects into your pipeline to begin with, it’s a shame to see them opt out. It’s much easier and cost effective to convert additional sales from a current customer than it is to acquire a new one.

Results are what count

Soulpepper initiated a 1264% increase in subscriptions, doubled open and click through rates, reduced their unsubscribe rate by 78% and increased revenues by 60% in 30 days

Email Marketing is a reliable way to immediately see how effective your overall digital marketing strategy is performing. Take Momentum Watches for example. Soulpepper initiated a 1264% increase in subscriptions, doubled open and click through rates, reduced their unsubscribe rate by 78% and increased revenues by 60% in 30 days. For Cosabella, a luxury lingerie brand known the world over, we reduced their unsubscribe rates by 48% while simultaneously increasing sales exclusively from email by 39%. One key (but often overlooked) tactic common to both clients was our focus on actively reducing unsubscribe rates as a way to increase sales. Here are some easy tips to help you do the same.

Tip #1: Create well designed emails – for desktop and mobile

A major challenge of email marketing is ensuring your message is delivered to recipients in the beautiful way it was intended. Subliminally, they might associate your poor design efforts with poor service or product quality. So it is important to check your templates against a variety of devices and email clients to make sure the display is capturing the email in a way that is attractive, retains all content and is user-friendly.

We generally make all full-width images 1800px wide (and ensure that half-width images add up to 1800px). This guarantees that they will fit into a template that is 600 pixels wide, and render well on retina display devices.

Tip #2: Make sure your emails load quickly

The load times of an email varies depending on the reader’s environment and the performance of the image server. You should aim to keep load times below two seconds to ensure your subscribers aren’t waiting too long for your email to fully open. Open rates may not be affected by this performance but engagement will be. Make sure you don’t include images that are too big they won’t be able to load quickly.

Tip #3: Don’t let them unsubscribe right away

We are not suggesting that you hide the unsubscribe link in your email; in fact, we encourage you to offer a quick and simple unsubscribe process, as it will appease any customers that are determined to part ways. Everyone likes a clean break.

One of the biggest culprits that influences customers to unsubscribe is email frequency. More often than not, a customer will unsubscribe if they feel that the emails are too frequent. Or not frequent enough. But if you are sending more than three emails a week, you can safely assume the former.

As part of the unsubscribe process, customers should have the option to enter their email to complete the transaction, or link to their Preference page where they can select how many emails they receive. We have saved client’s countless subscribers from unsubscribing by doing that one simple tip.

Tip #4:  Utilize an unsubscribe confirmation email.

Despite all of your hard work and effort, some people will still unsubscribe from your emails. Take that opportunity to solicit feedback from them. You will be surprised that there are people who care enough about your brand enough that they will offer feedback. The insights this information can offer could help prevent unsubscribes in the future. One of our clients learned that their customers loved the brand, but didn’t need to hear from them twice a week, and so they adjusted their deployment accordingly. This will also help combat accidental unsubscribes. The same email allows a subscriber to easily re-subscribe to your list and correct the accidental click of the unsubscribe button.

Building a roster of clients for a lifetime

It’s easier and more cost effective to convert additional sales from a current customer than it is to acquire a new one.

It’s well documented that a regular email marketing campaign is a reliable way to drive more people to your website and more dollars to your bottom line. But to build an active roster of clients for a lifetime takes a disciplined strategy and consistent execution. Dropping unsubscribe rates as much as possible is simply one key way to make that happen.

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Written by Sean Jimenez

About the author

Sean Jimenez is a serial entrepreneur and recognized as one of the leading digital marketing experts in North America. He is also the founder of soulpepper, a digital marketing agency on a mission.

soulpepper is a digital marketing agency on a mission. We help companies that are up to something good, increase leads, attract more customers and drive more dollars to their bottom line. Subscribe to our newsletter for more great ideas on how to build your e-commerce empire.