It was September 2015 and I’d just sent out a sales email to my blossoming list of subscribers. About 30 people signed up for my newsletter. I was selling craft subscription boxes. I knew I could do this because a few years previously, this was part of my job. Selling stuff over emails and getting people to sign up.
So far, I’d sent six weekly emails and only one of those had said: “buy my products”. I needed to make this email work. I was committed to running this business for a year (because someone had signed up for a year’s subscription) and I had invested that money into wholesale products.
My living room was full of knitting needles, wool, pattern cards and shipping boxes.
The email was sent at around 7pm on a Friday evening. The time when people would be doom-scrolling and their wages were sitting freshly in their bank accounts.
Two people unsubscribed.
I feel no shame now telling you that I burst into tears. I thought if I can’t keep people on my list, how am I ever going to make this work as a business? Those unsubscribes felt like a personal judgment on me.
I text my business coach. At the time, I was in a membership group with around 20 other women all launching craft or arts-based businesses. It was a wonderful supportive community. The coach who ran it, text me straight back: “They were never going to buy your subscription box. Good riddance.”
“But,” I wailed, “they might change their minds!”
“No. They won’t.”
It was a hard lesson to learn when you only have a handful of people on your list. You never truly know why someone decides they no longer want to get your emails, even when they tick the boxes.
My coach was right though. People unsubscribing is a good thing. And here’s why:
Subscribers cost you money
Even if you’re on a free list like Mailer Lite or Mailchimp, every subscriber costs you money because eventually, those services will start charging you when you hit a limit. If people are on your list and never open your emails, that’s a space (whether free or charged) that someone could take up who does want to read your emails.
List hygiene
You also need to consider the negative implications of all these people on your email list who don’t want to read what you’re sending. The more you can increase your open rate, the more chance your readers have of your email not going into the junk or spam folder.
You increase your chances of your email being marked as spam if fewer people are opening it. Clearing out your email list means that your email open rates increase but also the number of opens increases because you’re telling all those spam filters that your email is wanted.
Every quarter, go through your email list and if someone isn’t opening your emails, you have two options:
1. Just delete them. You won’t notice, they won’t notice.
2. Try to re-engage them.
If you’re going for option two, you can set this up in an automation so you don’t need to delete them, your email system will do it for you. In fact, you can set it up to do this when your subscribers meet certain criteria so you don’t need to look at it at all.
It means you also have a better idea of who does want to read what you’re sending and they are the ones who should really be getting your attention.
Why does it feel so personal (and how to stop it)
I know that I’m not alone in feeling like an unsubscribe is a personal attack on my abilities. I had a client who absolutely hated seeing people unsubscribe. Every week she’d ask me to look at the stats after the email was sent because she couldn’t bear to see the unsubscribes. If I did it then she wouldn’t need to know about it.
I’d previously suggested a good list clear out and she needed time to come around to the idea. The rejection can feel so personal when you’re emotionally invested in what you do.
What can we do about this?
Aside from remembering that this is a good thing, we can work on uncoupling ourselves from our work. I realise this is easier said than done. It’s one of the reasons why people struggle so much to write and publish blogs or to share their writing with others.
Often, when we create something – whether that be art, words, or sound – we put a piece of ourselves and our passion into that work. It carries a bit of who we are. If we’re particularly proud of a piece of work, the rejection can hurt even more.
I see it in the people who do my Blog Confidence course (and why it has that name). They are perfectly capable writers but they don’t feel confident that what they produce is good enough. And then you have to put it out online for the world to see and comment on? That’s a step too far for some people.
Then imagine that you’ve spent hours crafting the perfect newsletter and not only do you get the rejection of the unsubscribe, but you also don’t really know what you’ve done wrong.
It’s a lot.
The only way to get over it is to do it more. The more emails that you send, the more writing or creative work that you publish, the easier it will get to accept that rejection. And at some point, you’ll realise that it’s not a rejection of you as a person, it’s simply that they don’t want what you’re selling.
It really isn’t personal why they unsubscribe. They could meet you in the street and get along with you fine. In fact, that has happened to me before when I ran the craft company. I met someone at the show who told me they unsubscribed from my emails and social channels. We chatted it out and what I created simply wasn’t for them. They weren’t my ideal customer.
People unsubscribing is part of running a business. If you’re struggling with it or hate that bit of reporting where you need to share your unsubscribes that you’ve had, then take heart that it’s about what they want, not what they think of you.
There is another side to this though…
Make sure you’re bringing in the right people
I don’t really have many unsubscribes these days. That’s because the people who sign up to and read my Thursday Brew are very much my people. They read it because I’ve made sure I’m clear about who this newsletter is for (and who it isn’t).
When I’m planning and writing my weekly missives, I am doing it with my reader in mind. I’m thinking about what’s interesting for my reader. When I’m promoting it, I’m making sure it’s only my dream readers who sign up. I’m trying to turn away the people who won’t stick around.
Sure, my readers might never buy any of the services I sell but I also don’t expect them to. I subscribe to loads of newsletters that I love reading and I might not ever buy from them. However, the ones I open every week are the ones where I buy the book or go to the event or get the services.
And it means that if we meet in real life, we’ll probably get along like long-lost friends.
If you really do hate those unsubs, make sure you’re doing everything you can to let people know who your newsletter is for. Say how often you publish, let them know what to expect and who should be reading it.
And just so you know, I’m really glad you’re here.
This is the third part in a series on newsletters. You can read part one about newsletter formats here and part two about getting people to open your emails here.