One of my favourite ways to start a new year is to do a ruthless review of all the stuff assaulting my email inbox. Last year, it appears, I signed up for about two dozen things that are competing for my diminishing attention span on a daily or weekly basis. I don’t recall subscribing to most of them, which is my first clue that I probably don’t need them. Another clue is how often I send them unread into the trash.
I’m pleased to report that unsubscribing has improved immensely in the past year, and I’ve had only a handful of weird experiences in my dismount.
The weirdest of them all is the kind where I click unsubscribe and then I am 
unsubscribed. No gentle inquiry as to why I might like to get off the list. No sorry-to-see-you-go. Just a terse little confirmation screen. Which brings me to the first mistake.
Never Asking Why
Why on earth would you waste your very last conversation with anyone who might be remotely interested in your content? I know most folks won’t bother filling in the little survey about why they are unsubscribing, but a few will and that’s good data to have.
Not Being Picky Enough
The second big miss for marketers is not just kicking people off the list themselves. At least for those of us in B2B, I’d say anyone who hasn’t opened an email in three months or clicked at least one link in six months is a goner. Maybe if you’ve got a seasonal buying cycle, let them stick around for a bit longer, but why waste precious retargeting calories on people who just don’t care?
Forgetting to Point Out the Exits
Another opportunity is to invite your subscribers to bail out on their own. In the spirit of those awful posters about loving things and setting them free, it seems to be a much nicer thing to let subscribers self-select while they are merely indifferent, but not yet annoyed. If you work in a country with anti-spam laws, you may have to ask your subscribers once a year anyway if they want to stay on the list, but why wait? Why not shoot your list a note once in a while to let them know you come in peace and don’t want to be a bother. It’s sort of classier than an email beginning with “in order to comply with anti-spam legislation, we are required to…”. All that says is you have a lawyer, not that you want to continue to converse with someone.
Missing the Obvious
The fourth big list opportunity is to make sure all the folks who should be on your marketing list are on your marketing list. This includes all your current customers, your shareholders, your suppliers and anyone you have a current relationship with. Depending on the rules in your country, you can probably add most of these folks yourself to the list, or at the very least, invite them to opt-in. Employees are also great additions to your marketing list, plus they don’t really have a choice. Be sure you have a way to filter their IP address in case they click through to some lead generation pieces. It’s awkward otherwise.
No Slice, No Dice, No Julienne
The final great thing you should be doing with that list is some serious analytics, dissecting it as many ways as you can. If you don’t know what you’re doing, go find a little agency to do it for you. List segmentation is a fantastic way to figure out what’s working in your content and inbound marketing, what isn’t and who really gives a crap about your product and your brand. While they’re at it, get the thing deduped, validate the addresses, scrub it against your unsubscribe requests and make it all squeaky clean.
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BizMarketer is written by Elizabeth Williams
I help companies have better conversations
Drop me a line at ewilliams@candlerchase.com
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