Unsubscribes feel like a punch to the gut? Here are a few reasons to stop caring and three ways to do it.
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Transcript
What’s up? Liz Wilcox here. You are listening to episode 39 of the email sound booth podcast. Lucky me. Oh my gosh. Thank you for listening. Seriously. Now let’s get into this. Um, I’m going to keep this short and sweet. Uh, but this is a sensitive topic. Ouch. Getting over unsubscribes. So yep. Unsubscribes happen.
If you are emailing, you are getting unsubscribes. This is 100 percent normal. I want you to know that. And the second thing I want you to know is it’s also a hundred percent normal to feel like crap about it. Um, yeah, you work really hard to grow your email list. Uh, me, I’m always screaming at you. Grow your list, grow your list, grow your list.
It’s the number one thing. Um, And so when you work hard and then you send an email that, Oh my gosh, this feels really good. I’m so glad I’m sending this email. And then you hit, people hit unsubscribe. Oh my gosh. It feels like a punch in the gut. I totally get it. But here are a couple of things I want you to know like logically about unsubscribes and they’ll help you.
And then we’ll also talk about like emotionally how we can get over them actually. Okay. So number one, You gotta understand that it’s not personal. Think back to the last time you unsubscribed from an email list. Was it because someone sent you something so offensive, so disgusting that you had to unsubscribe, right?
You were like, oh my gosh, I can’t believe they would send me this stupid email. No, probably not. Usually it’s just because you’re likely overloaded. Uh, yes, I signed up for this email list, but I’m too busy. I need to just unsubscribe because my inbox is totally overloaded. That’s usually why we unsubscribe from something, right?
That, or we don’t even remember signing up for the list, right? So email, what I love about it is that it’s consent based, right? So people can take away their consent at any time. And usually it’s not because you did anything wrong. It’s that, you know, their inbox is overloaded or they’re just, you know, Oh yes, I wanted to learn crocheting, but the timing, you know, my kids just started school.
The timing is not right. I need to unsubscribe from these emails, right? It’s just a way of them being responsible with their inbox. It’s not a way of saying you suck, right? So think of it that way. It’s not personal. It’s just a way of them managing their overloaded inbox. to do with you, right? Uh, the second thing, and this is what really helped me get over it is you pay for your list.
If they ain’t buying, why do you want them on your list? Right? Um, so you pay for your email list, right? You have active campaign, kit, flow desk, something like that. Um, and you Most email service providers charge you per customer, right? So I know when I was with ConvertKit, once I hit a hundred subscribers, the price went up a thousand, five thousand, ten thousand, etc.
Right? The price always goes up. So, we want people to unsubscribe because we don’t want to end up paying. Everyone that’s ever subscribed that no longer opens our emails or doesn’t care or needs to offload to manage their inbox, we want them to unsubscribe. We don’t want those people on our list that are never going to buy or really aren’t that interested, uh, because we have to pay for them, right?
And y’all, I don’t know about you, but my stomach is incredibly money motivated. Okay, so I want to save as much money as possible so I can eat as much as possible Uh, so that’s the that is the second reason Uh, you know to hopefully help you get over unsubscribes and that’s the one that helps me the most I’m always like thank you for getting off the list.
So I don’t have to cold. Uh, Cold scrub you okay Uh, the third thing is And it kind of goes hand in hand, it’s good for deliverability. We would rather have, for deliverability, bleh, bleh, bleh, for deliverability purposes, we’d rather have someone unsubscribe, like, you know, consciously opt out, than subconsciously opt in.
opt out, which if they’re subconsciously opting out, that means they’re staying on the email list, but they’re not opening. That’s really bad, uh, for deliverability, right? We want people, we only want people on the list that are going to open. So you’d rather have someone unsubscribe and say, actually, I’m not that interested, unsubscribe, then say, I’m not that interested, delete.
I’d rather have someone unsubscribe from the email. So I’m not sending them Emails anymore than just opt out by not opening, right? Because every time someone opts out by just not opening my emails That signals a red flag to what I call the internet gods, right? You get enough red flags you start ending up in spam So we want people to unsubscribe that’s saying i’m not really that interested Okay, and then the last thing at the end of the day the more you email The less it’s gonna hurt and I know it’s like, oh, but it hurts every time But it’s true and you probably know this about anything that you’ve done the more you email the more confident you become the more you Run the less you trip over your feet, right?
The more you do something the less it hurts the easier it gets right? So I say it with love I really do. Uh, if you’re not watching the youtube i’m like cringing my face right now You You’ve got to toughen up your skin a little bit, and that’s not like to say, Oh, you got to be tough. Whatever. It doesn’t matter.
Just push through. But the good news is this doesn’t even have to be active to toughen up your skin. It’s a very passive thing when you do the work. You will care less, right? Alright, so let’s go into a few practical ways to toughen up that skin. Uh, to sort of move on from the oven subscribes, emotionally.
Number one, stop looking. Okay. I know I’m talking to you the second you send an email and you see an unsubscribe, you know, you’re, you’re looking to see exactly who it is that unsubscribed, right? Oh, don’t do that, babe. You’re hurting yourself. Don’t hurt yourself. Uh, Liz loves you. She doesn’t want you to hurt yourself.
Don’t do that. So stop looking at unsubscribes. No, there’s nothing right now. If you get personally offended by unsubscribes, like, and I don’t mean offended, like, oh, I can’t believe they did that, just like it feels like crap in your body, then there is nothing you can learn from your unsubscribes that’s going to help you with email marketing.
Now me, I’ve been email marketing for over eight years now. Um, it doesn’t really hurt my feelings to look at unsubscribes and to like look at who unsubscribed, when and why. Thank you I’m over it. But if you are not over it, stop looking. You’re hurting yourself. Um, there’s nothing you can glean. There’s no wisdom you can glean from looking at who unsubscribed.
Okay, uh, number two, when you hit send, or actually right before you hit send, read, this is a very tactical thing, read your email, ask yourself, does this email absolutely represent who I am and how I do business and how I want to talk to my audience to the best of my ability today? This is the best email I can send out.
It’s exactly what I want to say to people. The answer should be yes, right? Like, yes, this is the best I can do. This is good today. This feels good. This is what I want to say. Then hit send. I want you to very actively feel good about the email. To say, like, yes, this is the email I want to send. This represents me as myself, me as the business owner.
It represents the business well. Because when you feel that way, then you can tell yourself when you do get unsubscribes, it’s like, well, I did my best. I represented myself, my business, my brand as best I can. That person that unsubbed just didn’t jive. But the good news about that is when you send out emails that feel good to your core, The people that do open it, do read it, do not unsubscribe, they’re going to double down on you.
They’re going to open the next email. So again, when you hit send, right before you hit send, tell yourself, this is the best email that I could send out today that represents me and how I want to do business and anyone that doesn’t jive. should jump ship because I’m doing things the way I want them to, the way that’s best for me and my business and my business objectives.
And that’s all that matters. Okay. You’re doing great work. You’re doing great work. All right. So celebrate yourself. And the third thing, is list build, okay? You’ve got to list build. The more you build your email list, the less it will matter. I know it feels hard if you send out an email, you get, you know, 10 unsubscribes, But you haven’t gotten 10 new subscribers in the last month.
That is difficult. So definitely, definitely, if you haven’t yet, check out episode 18, three ways to grow your email list and one way to think twice about that’s going to help you figure out your next right step with emailing. But remember, the more you grow your email list, the less it’s going to matter that people are unsubscribing because you know, there are more fish in the sea.
And I want to leave you with. This it doesn’t matter what email you write What the topic is how open you are, etc. People will unsubscribe I sent out an email. I don’t know two three years ago And it was about my big why why i’m doing the thing that i’m doing And it talked a lot about the loss of my brother.
I lost my brother when I was 21 years old. He was 25 um and I shared how You That actually helped drive me to do the things I wanted, to take bigger risks, and to live my life. My friend, I got 24 unsubscribes. 24 people were like, nah, not for me. It doesn’t, it doesn’t matter what you say in your email.
People will unsubscribe. Not everyone is meant to be on your list. all the time, right? And maybe some of those people came back to my list. Um, you know, there were, there were many reasons they could have unsubscribed. But remember, like, when you Write your email and you say, this is the thing that I want to write today.
This best represents me and my business objectives and the audience I want to talk to. Then it’s going to matter less when people unsubscribe because you did your job that day. Also, the more you email, the less this is going to hurt. And the more you grow your list, the less this is going to hurt. All right.
That’s my take on unsubscribes and sort of for lack of a better term getting over them I know it’s hard, but I know if I can do it my sensitive little self if I can do it you can do it, too Uh, thanks so much for listening if this episode helped you at all today I’d love for you to check out the reviews of this podcast And you know hit me up with how it helped Um, and then of course we are running our annual past sale for black friday If you want to get on the wait list for that, so you can get a year into my membership, plus all my other products for free, uh, you can do that at lizwillcox.