How much thought do you put into your email unsubscribe?
It’s a legal requirement for every message you send to have an easy unsubscribe process, but you hope it gets used very little.
Whichever sector you’re in, you can expect to see some shift in unsubscribe behaviour whenever a major holiday rears its head. Have you seen any of these before?
Behavioural shifts to watch for
Power to the preference centre: The plus side of holiday-themed marketing is that everyone is doing it, so you have plenty of examples to take inspiration from. The minus side is that everyone is doing it, so even the biggest holiday-lover around may decide that your snowmen/bunnies/pumpkins sales message is one too many.
The way around this is to add a “holiday content” option to your preference centre. That way your audience can avoid your holiday marketing, while still getting general newsletters, event invites, and whatever else they’re interested in from you. There was a phase around 2019 where brands sent proactive “Would you like to opt out of holiday marketing?” emails, but this particular trend eventually came full circle and ended up still frustrating consumers.
Peak mobile: Buyers are opening email on mobile more often in this period, so your unsubscribe link and preference centre need to be mobile-friendly. Hiding the mandatory unsubscribe away in tiny, barely visible text will only make your audience flag you as Spam instead, and your deliverability will take a hit!
Holding out for a deal: You might see fewer unsubscribes in peak seasons, as customers keep an eye out for deals and promotions. You should benchmark your unsubscribe rates in non-peak seasons in order to have a clear picture of whether this is happening to you.
Cleaning house: Peak seasons tend to accompany major holidays, when your audience’s workload is winding down. So if you see an increase in unsubscribes, don’t panic! It’s possible that some of your audience are looking back through their inbox, realising it’s been 3 months since they read one of your emails, and using a period of calm to tidy you away. Not the news you want, but look at the previous behaviour of your new unsubscribes to see who it is you’ve lost. Is this out of the blue, or the end result of a long-term lack of engagement?
Can’t see the wood for the (Christmas) trees?
Does your email platform give you enough insight into your unsubscribe rate and other key metrics?
Spotler Mail+ makes it easy to keep track of how your audience is reacting to your emails, and to plug that data into your CRM to react to it effectively. Check it out today with a one-to-one demo.
