Irrelevant content No. 1 reason readers unsubscribe
Talk about competition in the inbox: Today, organizations and individuals send and receive 269 billion emails a day, according to The Radicati Group.
“The fight for inbox survival might therefore leave room for only the most useful, targeted newsletters, leaving less valued newsletters in the dust,” writes “king of usability” Jakob Nielsen.
Nielsen’s right. Delivering targeted, relevant, useful information to subscribers and recipients helps you:
1. Retain subscribers.
The No. 1 reason people unsubscribe from e-zines is irrelevant content, according to #LyrisROI. Some 67% of those surveyed said they quit an emailed newsletter because there was nothing in it for them.
In another study, by Chadwick Martin Bailey, irrelevant content was the No. 2 reason people unsubscribed. No. 1: too many emails (69).
When users complain about the relevance of email, according to the Nielsen Norman Group’s research, half intended to unsubscribe; half plan to ignore or delete them.
2. Get read.
The No. 1 reason people like an e-zine is that it’s valuable and relevant to the reader’s own interests or buying or searching habits, according to the Neilsen Norman Group.
In fact, “make it relevant to the reader” was the No. 2 piece of advice subscribers offered e-zine creators in NNG’s usability tests. No. 1: Keep it short.
3. Avoid looking like a spammer.
Some subscribers considered e-zines to be spam if they had content that felt random and lacked relevance, according to NNG research. (Note: You’ll never know it if these people are among your subscribers. They don’t unsubscribe; they just ignore or delete your messages or put them in their spam filters.)
Is your email content relevant to your readers? Or is it just relevant to your organization?
How can you get your emails read?
American professionals receive an average of 121 emails a day — times each of their two or more inboxes. No wonder 276 emails languish unread in the average inbox at any time.
In this environment, how can you write email newsletters, email marketing campaigns and other emails that get read?
Find out at Think Inside the Inbox — our email-writing workshop that begins Dec. 12.
You’ll learn to write email leads that get read (our fill-in-the-blanks formula will change your life), avoid the No. 1 reason people unsubscribe and pass a simple test for getting the word out via email on mobile.
Save up to $100 with our group discounts.
