Why Your Prospects Subscribe & Unsubscribe from Emails

While modern social media may be the shiny new toy in digital marketing, there’s one classic marketing platform that hasn’t lost its effectiveness over time: email marketing. Even the majority of millennials prefer a business to communicate with them through email.

Yet email marketing can be elusive. What’s working? What isn’t? I'm diving into some recent research from HubSpot that offers answers to these questions- and will help you understand what drives a prospect to both sign up for your email newsletter and, on the flip side, unsubscribe from it.

What Makes Prospects Subscribe

Informational Brand Content

The survey revealed a consensus among respondents concerning a brand’s content. Content marketing is an advisor’s best friend- and this is exactly why. When you put out content that’s helpful to your target audience, they’ll value it and be receptive.

If a prospect finds the content you offer, such as blog posts or guides on your website, useful, and you promise more content if they subscribe to your newsletters, they’ll be likely to do so. Many people like brand newsletters because they help them keep tabs on important content releases and also offer exclusive content perks. Make sure you leverage the content you have, continue to create targeted content, and include a variety of that content in your emails; experiment with different content mediums, such as blogs, videos, infographics, or e-books.

Company Updates

Email marketing has much more of a personal feel to it than your social media or website- your newsletter subscribers are guaranteed to never miss any important company announcements or updates.

Prospects or clients may subscribe to your newsletter easily to stay informed about your business. It’s essentially a direct line of communication. To cater to this, make sure to maintain a degree of transparency in your email marketing. In addition, when something pressing happens- such as COVID-19– it’s good practice to send a press-release style email blast to address the situation.

A Mix of Diverse Content

Many survey respondents reported that they subscribe to emails for “other” reasons or “all of the above.”

While informational content and updates are vital to acknowledge, don’t lock yourself into those two categories. These survey results show that most subscribers are happy to receive a diverse mix of content. Overall, just try to experiment with different email strategies and find one that seems to get the best response from your subscribers.

What Makes Prospects Unsubscribe

Too Many Emails

Over half of prospects unsubscribe because you’re sending too many emails (some describe this as more than one email per day, while others describe it as more than one email per week.)

Sending too many emails, regardless of their actual quality, will make subscribers think of one word when they see your emails: spam. A good rule of thumb is to make your email newsletter weekly and send extra emails as you see fit.

Don’t panic, though- this doesn’t mean you can never send emails biweekly or two emails in one day. Simply avoid flooding your subscribers’ inbox with emails that could easily be consolidated into one weekly newsletter.

Over Promotional or Unhelpful Content

While many prospects will subscribe to your newsletter to receive helpful content from your company, those same prospects will unsubscribe if your content becomes overwhelmingly unhelpful. 17% of consumers will unsubscribe when content is over promotional, and 9% will unsubscribe simply if the content is no longer valuable.

This is a great example of the elements of “spammy” emails.

The latter requires you to closely examine your content strategy and better align it to your audience’s needs. It means that subscribers are no longer seeing the content you provide via email as worth the email subscription. The first, however, pertains more to your email content specifically.

Of course, every advisor wants to seek out new clients to work with, but there comes a point where those efforts can be a big turn off for prospects. Instead of trying to make your email newsletter a space to persuade prospects into becoming clients, utilize it as a place to share your expertise. You can mention the services you provide, but don’t make it the primary focus of every email blast.

Company Miscommunication

HubSpot reports that prospects will unsubscribe to email newsletters that they never signed up for, provided content contrary to what they expected, or misled them about what the newsletter would offer.

The last thing you want is for a valuable prospect to feel “tricked” into signing up for your newsletter. In any call-to-action that contains a newsletter signup, be transparent about exactly what your prospects can expect. It’s worse for a prospect to unsubscribe from your newsletter due to feeling deceived than never having signed up at all.

While prospect reactions to your email marketing efforts can often be hard to gauge, keep subscribers subscribed simply by being intentional with your emails. Think from the prospect’s perspective: they subscribed to your newsletter because they wanted to hear what you have to say. They want your insight into the industry.

Find creative ways to continue to provide that for them, and keep in mind the email marketing red flags: sending too many, providing over promotional or unhelpful content, and miscommunication about what your newsletter consists of.