Are Un-subscriptions Personal or Not?
You madly tap away, sweat dripping onto your keyboard, brow furrowed in concentration.
You hit ‘send’ and your newsletter/blog post goes off to your database. Whew! Then an unsubscribe notice or two pop into your Inbox. What you feel, think and do next can impact enormously on your business.
Do you tend to take it personally?
Especially if you’ve chatted happily away to that person at an event?
Do you spend hours agonising over ‘why?!”?
Is the next time you meet that person an uncomfortable experience for you – after all, she unsubscribed so she mustn’t like you?
Or are you a ‘don’t give a toss’ type of response?
Either end of the spectrum can do you a disservice as you’ll miss a valuable opportunity.
Firstly, generally unsubscribing is not a personal response. (However, if it did come directly after a tense interaction, then there is some resolution needed.) Your correspondence and or business simply isn’t of interest to that person. Perhaps it’s not relevant, perhaps she already has a favourite accountant/coach/beauty therapist or perhaps doesn’t live in your catchment area.
Any which way, it’s not about you personally, it’s about whether there is space for your services/products in her life/Inbox. Remember the times you unsubscribed, and why. Perhaps there are some it’s easier to keep receiving mail from, leaving it unread, rather than risk offending them. Or is it time you culled your overflowing Inbox, to minimise time wastage?
If you don’t give a toss, why not? There is a learning to be gained from how your mailing list responds to your messages. If you have quite a few unsubscribes after a message, it’s important you pay attention before you lose too many more. It’s easier to retain than gain – and that goes for clients and customers too. So although you don’t take it personally, take notice when they occur and by whom. If a previously good client unsubscribes that is worth investigating. It may have been an accident, it may indicate a shift in your communication needs addressing.
Your database is your gold, so take care to nurture it, feeding regularly the ideal nutrients, with the occasional dash of spice for interest, but don’t overfeed or starve it. Certainly don’t abuse it by selling or hiring it to others without permission. Encourage it to grow and watch your business flourish… and if you need a mindset shift to be able to do this, ask for my expert help.
