The Importance of Unsubscribe Links

There are many reasons why you need an unsubscribe link. Firstly, it’s just polite to give your customers that option, and secondly, you need it to comply with GDPR.

An unsubscribe link will help you remain on good terms with your customers and clients even if they do decide to unsubscribe, and it can help you gain valuable feedback when they do.

An unsubscribe list makes it easier to keep your list clean and prevents you from being marked as spam by customers who want to leave.

How Does an Unsubscribe Link Work

Simply put, you need to include an unsubscribe link in your marketing emails. You can make the most of it by including a simple textbox with the link where the subscriber can let you know their reasons for leaving your email marketing list.

While this might be left blank by many, the few who do decide to fill it in can provide you with valuable information. Alternatively, you can add a few checkboxes so that the subscriber can choose the reason for their decision to leave.

An email unsubscribe link works in a simple way. You add it to your marketing emails, and any subscribers who no longer want to receive your content and be a part of your mailing list will be able to click on the link to unsubscribe and no longer hear from you.

By including an option to provide feedback, you can also gain important information that can help you make changes and improvements to your campaign to help you retain your current subscribers and provide more value to them.

How to Respond to Unsubscribe Email

Most of the time, when a subscriber clicks this link, they don’t want to hear from you again. However, it is polite to send them a last message letting them know that you have received their request and have removed them from your email list.

This may also be an opportunity to get them to change their mind, for example, by offering an incentive that they can take advantage of if they decide to sign up again. However, for the most part, you should respect their decision to leave, as being too pushy can put them off even thinking about signing up again in the future.

You can also respond to an unsubscribe email by asking for feedback. In your confirmation email, you may want to include a call to action where the subscriber can choose to fill out a small text form detailing why they decided to unsubscribe or pick a reason from a list of checkboxes.

Either way, you are not likely to get many subscribers who will do this, but enough might for you to gather some useful information.

How to Use Unsubscribe Data

Adding an unsubscribe link to your emails can also make it easier for you to gather valuable information from unsubscribe trends. For example, if you send a lot of emails one week and then see a rise in people cancelling their subscriptions, then this is a sign that you need to scale back and send fewer before you lose more subscribers.

It may also prompt you to check how well your email list is segmented and how well you are tailoring and personalising your messages, as this may have an impact.

Why Do People Press the Unsubscribe Button?

Bear in mind that it’s not always cut and dry when people unsubscribe from your email marketing list.

There are lots of different reasons, and it does not always necessarily mean that they do not want to be your customer any longer. For example, they might have cancelled their email subscription so that they can focus on communicating with your brand elsewhere, such as on social media.

Or, maybe they simply have too many lists that they have subscribed to that are cluttering up their inbox. A couple of opt-outs doesn’t mean that you need to worry about your list, and it’s completely normal. However, if you are getting large volumes of subscribers unsubscribing on a regular basis, it might be worth looking deeper.

How to Set up an Unsubscribe Link

To set up an unsubscribe link, add some instructions for opting-out in the email and highlight the text that you would like to use as the unsubscribe link. Then, click insert hyperlink, and select Mailto: as the type.

Enter your email address, followed by the subject link that you will tell the subscriber to look for when it checks your incoming mail server to look for unsubscribe reports. Your unsubscribe link will now be visible and available in your message for subscribers to click on if they want to opt out of your mailing list.

How to Add Unsubscribe Link to Email

Adding an unsubscribe link or opt-out link to an email message is a fairly simple process. Depending on the email service provider that you are using, you may be able to access email templates that already have an unsubscribe link built into the template for you to customise.

Essentially, all you need to do is add a link to your email, but rather than linking it back to a website or web page, you will link them to a pre-populated email back to you with their request to unsubscribe from your newsletter.

Why Do All Marketing Emails Need an Unsubscribe Link?

There are many benefits of including an unsubscribe link in your marketing emails. These include:

GDPR Unsubscribe Link

An unsubscribe link must be included in the email to be compliant with GDPR regulations. Under these regulations, consumers must be able to request that you remove their data from your records at any time, along with being able to request that you stop contacting them, either by email or otherwise.

Customers also have the right to request to be sent a copy of any data that you hold on them. GDPR came into effect in May 2018 and has set standards in the EU and UK for brands to follow.

If you do not comply with GDPR, you could be at risk of hefty fines up to 20 million Euro or 4% of your yearly global turnover, whichever is higher. A contact who requests to be removed from an email list is exercising their right as a data subject, and it is the duty of the company controlling the data to delete it.

Under GPDR, subscribers have the right to withdraw their consent for you to store and use their data at any time.

Avoid Customer Frustration

Many people have found themselves in a situation where they might have accidentally given their consent to receive updates from a brand or website that they are not actually that interested in. It can be annoying and frustrating, particularly when an inbox is already full of promotional emails.

An unsubscribe link will help you make sure that you are not unnecessarily frustrating customers who do not want to hear from you.

Get Important Feedback

When you send a confirmation email to let users know that you are honouring their request or include a feedback option when they click the unsubscribe link, this can be a great opportunity to get some feedback on why they decided to opt-out and what you might have been able to do differently.

While there might not be anything that you can do to keep this particular subscriber interested right now, this can help you by providing you with more information on why people might lose interest in your content, so that you can make improvements and retain your current subscribers.

Stay in the Inbox

The truth is that including an unsubscribe link in your marketing emails puts you in a better position to avoid spam boxes. This is because when people are not interested in your content, no amount of sending them more of it is going to change that.

If they cannot unsubscribe, the next best option for them is to flag your email as spam, which is going to damage your reputation as a sender and could ultimately mean that more of your emails end up in spam – even when they are going to interested subscribers.

While an unsubscribe link might mean that you lose some contacts, it’s important to have. Not only is it now against the law to not provide the option to opt out, but it can also help you build a better relationship with your subscribers.