Should They Stay Or Should They Go Now?

Managing an email list is not always simple. Building a responsive list of subscribers is a no brainer in the field of digital marketing but there are some decisions to be made along the way. One of these is whether to unsubscribe portions of that list. I was prompted to do just that the other day when I got a message from someone who had unsubbed from one of my lists.

In this case it was a quick process so I wasn’t involved in the decision. The person in question signed up via one of my ads for a series of videos, quickly decided it wasn’t for him and unsubscribed. That works for me crazy as that may sound and here’s why.

First off a list is only as good as the people on it. That’s actually the art and science of marketing. Whatever you are promoting and building a list for, you want to be attracting the people who are most likely to make a buying decision at some point. Sooner is better than later but how long should they get? It doesn’t matter to them how long they stay on your list if they are just deleting or ignoring your mails.This is one of the things to consider when managing an email list.

Managing An Email List – To Unsubscribe Or Not? 

As a list gets bigger it gets more expensive with most email list management services like Aweber. So if you have thousands of subscribers on there but most of them are not opening your emails or buying from you decisions have to be made. Do you dump them or keep them? Understandably, especially in the early days, deleting subscribers doesn’t come naturally but its part of managing an email list cost effectively.

Some marketers I know have a deleting policy. They monitor open rates and ditch any subscribers who have not opened an email in 1, 2 or 3 months. A lot depends on what they are promoting. For a high value product it’s understandable that people might take longer to reach a buying decision. They need time to get to know, like and trust you. For lower value products though, it’s more a case of volume versus profit.

Learning From Your List 

In either case when managing an email list it’s important to take a view on the subject. You can learn about your marketing from the responsiveness or non-responsiveness of your list. If you find you are building an unresponsive list then it’s a “message to self” scenario. Maybe you need to take a closer look at why your marketing is attracting the mildly curious rather than the rampant buyer.

The internet is a click happy place after all. There are millions of shiny objects out there vying for attention. This tends to create a bit of a magpie mentality. After all what’s it going to cost? An email address? Not much really especially when you can just unsubscribe if your click doesn’t deliver EXACTLY what you want.

My policy for managing an email list for the high value, educational products I promote, is to once in a while give my list a little gee-up message. I explain that I’m running a business and that if they aren’t interested after I’ve given them all the information I can about it then they are a cost to my business. I suggest they get in touch or unsubscribe before I unsubscribe them. Drastic? No I don’t think so.

I need action takers for that business and to be frank a lack of action sort of proves their unsuitability for the product anyway. Unsubscribing is taking action after all and it makes room for someone who might be a better match anyway so it’s an unintentional favour to me.

Managing An Email List – Should They Stay Or Should They Go Now?

By Dave Menzies