Hi everyone, I run a bargains and freebies website and have around 2,500 newsletter susbscribers. The newselleter is basically a summary of all the latest bargains and is automatically sent by collecting new stories through RSS. Everyday, around 20-30% susbcriber open the email and visit the site. For last few days, as the list size have grown over 2000, some people have started unsubcribing and there are also 1-2 spam complaints. I don't want to loose daily 500 hits by not sending the newseltter and at the same time I don't want to get banned by ISPs for sending excessive emails as a result of spam complaints. I am using email system by Aweber.com. I have tried reducing the email frequency to 2 a week but it has not helped the unsusbcription issue. For every 100 people who susbcribe, 50 of them end up unsubscribing which looks like a high number. Any suggestions, ideas, advice?
maybe give them an option on how often they want to receive it? Daily/weekly/monthly... For some people a couple a week still might be too much. Give them control and they're more likely to stick around.
Those numbers are normal for email lists. People signup, then regret it later and cancel it. But to help deal with ISP's and being flagged as spam, a few things you should be doing: 1) Get email certified (Safe Sender, Sender Score Certified, Habeaus - that one is super expensive though, etc). Most major ISP's and free email networks use several of these whitelists/certifications, some of them are free while others cost a fee. 2) Make sure your list is CAN-SPAM Compliant. This means it's double opt-in, has a clear 'unsubscribe' link in every issue, and you follow all the other standards. 3) Don't fill it with crap (this should be a no-brainer, but a lot of people just send crap to their lists for the sake of keeping it running).
Hi Financeguy, If you are in the IM for a while, then you may be familiar with the nature of subscribers, aren't you? They are on your list if they get what they want. Period. I experienced that it is normal from the audience which is not closely targeted to be on someone's list for 2-3 months period. Then they change their mind and unsubscribe. Why? It may has many factors which has effect on this: - lack of double opt-in method - lack of unsubscibing possibility - frequently offers with foolish scarcity - weak quality of the relationship between you and them - weak quality of your content, or product - weak quality of your purchaser-support - some unsolved problems - technical bugs - peoples' forgetfulness - who knows why - etc. It belongs to the business. Never mind, if someone want to leave you cannot to keep them. So what? Next! You need to evolve your traffic tactics, try another sources and traffic generation method. The essence is: let the client acquisition be continuous. Try to keep them with qualitative products or service. Don't bore them. Btw Chistian pointed out well what you need to make right away. Many successes, Sandor