Managing opt-outs – and what causes them
Why opt-outs are the kiss of death
People may not open an email because they didn’t have time that day. They may even cancel a paid subscription or membership after reviewing their bills, and renew at a later date if the newsletter has something of import.
But once someone opts out, the publisher can never send to that email again.
To make matters worse, many niche publishers add frequency and different styles of ad units to maximise revenues.
However, these tactics make the newsletter especially vulnerable.
So what creates an opt-out?
What actually is causing the opt-out is hard to tell without a/b tests. However, there are some practices to avoid:
• Directly sending ads by email
Back in the day, publishers used to just put the ad in the email and send it out. Today that will kill a list.
• Too many exclusive sends
The exclusive send – typically a promotion that looks more like content marketing than a simple ad – can also damage the list. Some niche publishers have responded by allowing a single advertiser to sponsor the newsletter and weaving the sponsor’s content into the text of the news.
It all depends on both frequency and how the audience feels about that exclusive content. Fishing Tackle Retailer has a weekly newsletter – but also a daily for retailers interested in new products from manufacturers without an opt-out problem, even when adding exclusive sends – but only to the weekly list.
• Ads at the top
The best way to hook the audience – and keep them interested in the content- is a short personal note from the lead editor. At Omaha Magazine, newsletters lead with the editor, not the magazine brand, and the first ad is text-based, several paragraphs down. There are only two banner ads, much lower, when the reader has already been enticed.
• Too much frequency
Not everybody wants a newsletter daily, so if the newsletter is daily, give subscribers an option to receive only Monday or Friday. Segmenting the list by audience interest, such as b2c vs b2B, is another tactic. St. Louis Magazine has multiple opt-in options – 18 in all – emails to keep the audience interested.
• TLTR
Too long to read is an audience killer. Keep sentences short and lively. Break content into skimable sections, with bullet points.
• Content
In addition to segmenting, editors have a lot of feedback on what topics are getting the most opens and clicks. The worst opt-out to get is the one in which the audience is simply not interested in what the newsletter says.
The right tolerance
While marketers often recommend a 1% opt-out, for publishers, that level is too high – they would lose 50% of their list in two months at that rate.
With opt-outs for an engaged list of five per 10,000, the drop-off can be more easily offset by other means of list building. Watch the rate – if it doubles one week to 10 or 14, then something’s clearly wrong.
