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Why Your Readers Jump Ship

Author: Ivana Taylor   |   June 20th, 2011

Last Thursday I got a frantic call from a friend. He had launched a subscription membership site a few months ago and was seeing a lot of success. He’d done everything “right”.

He had a solid market niche that he was passionate about and was getting subscribers. But after a few months, he noticed…

a trend that he didn’t like – people had started unsubscribing to his list.

So I decided to subscribe to his list and see what I thought of it.

Here is my experience of subscribing to his community. See if you’re making these same mistakes with your email marketing.

1. You’re sending too many emails. It’s possible to get too much of a good thing. Sending your list frequent emails is often overwhelming. If you’re sending Daily tips, keep it down to a sentence or two that they go through quickly. A weekly email should contain helpful resources and links that save your readers time, money and effort and a monthly newsletter is usually a welcome summary of things they might have missed on your site.

2. Your emails are too long. This is a common reason for dropping off a list when EVERY email is a long sales letter. Limit long copy to landing pages and keep your emails short, sweet and to the point.

3. Your information isn’t relevant. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. People sign up for your emails because they are in the midst of a pain or frustration; they searched online and found you and signed up for information. Once you’ve solved their problem, they may not need to continue receiving that email. The solution to this is to have another, less frequent mailing that keeps your readers updated on what’s new and encourages referrals.

4. Your content is confusing. Be clear as to what the reader is signing up for. Readers unsubscribe when they think they are receiving one thing and experience something else. For example, if they signed up to receive a 7-part e-course and instead receive 7 sales letters, they will unsubscribe. If they signed up for quick tips, give them quick tips. If they signed up for an e-course, be sure to offer them educational information and don’t sell them throughout the letter. A simple call to action at the end for the full-course is enough.

Now let’s turn the tables and outline what readers LOVE in a good subscription. Readers love content that’s relevant to exactly who they are, what’s important to them and that gives them quick and easy solutions.

The first thing to do is to make sure that your information is well suited to the audience and their needs. Here are a few ways to make sure that happens:

• Create a focused landing page. Having a landing page with just one primary topic focus is an ideal way to make sure that your content will match the needs of your audience. For example, a landing page with the headline “How to Deal with Alzheimer’s at Any Stage” is very targeted to a specific audience with specific needs.

• Give them a choice. If you have more than one type of email that a reader can receive, let them choose which series they would like. Email marketing programs such as sWeber, Constant Contact or iContact all have flexible forms that give visitors the opportunity to categorize themselves or choose the information they want to receive.

• Keyword Research. Google’s keyword research tool is a great free resource. Enter the main word you are interested in and then look deep into the results for phrases that have large numbers of people searching for them but low competition.

Of course all of these ideas hinge on having good, high quality content. All the keyword research in the world will not make up for information that leaves your reader no better off than they were before.

When email marketing, create content that gives your reader the ability to actually DO something at that very moment and feel successful in checking it off their list and you will have loyal happy readers who refer your site to friends and family.

 

 

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