By Jonathan Baker Does your brand or business send batch emails to all the subscribers in your database? If yes, then pay special attention to this blog. Google has just launched a not-so-secret weapon. Meet Manage Subscriptions Be in the know about Manage Subscriptions. This is a new tool from Google that’s canvasing Gmail on the web as well as iOS and Android. Through Manage Subscriptions, the practice of deploying thousands of the same promotional email to every name in a database is fast becoming obsolete. These names (read: customers or prospects) in these databases now have the power to ‘batch-unsubscribe’ from promotional emails that are sorted by frequency and sender name. Is your brand or business at risk of losing subscribers? It’s time to take an honest look at your email strategy. Questions to Consider What follows is a list of questions that may not have occurred to you. Or, if you’ve gotten lax about how, where, when, and to whom you send promotional emails to, now is the time to change. Do you over-email every promotional piece, regardless of whether they’ve already been sent to customers in your database? Are the emails of ‘low value’ content? Tying in with the above question, are your emails unhelpful or unoriginal? Are the names in your database segmented by relevancy, or does every name get the same email, regardless of relevancy? If you answered ‘yes’ to one or more of these questions, you’ve been warned. Manage Subscriptions allows email recipients to clear out unwanted promotional pieces with greater ease and efficiency than they’ve had in the past. How can you prevent this from happening? Get Smart About Segmentation As pointed out in MarTech, keep in mind is that email unsubscribes happen when send volume outpaces engagement. (In short, trouble happens when quantity is prioritized over quality.) This is why databases must be carefully segmented so that the right email is delivered to the right customer. As further proof, here are two statistics worth noting: Approximately 40 percent of consumers in the United States unsubscribe on a weekly basis—for the reasons listed in the questions above. As a metric to check deliverability, more than 39 percent of email marketers track unsubscribe rates. Now that email users can unsubscribe through Manage Subscriptions this metric is both will gain greater visibility. Image Credit: e-Marketer How then, can you properly segment your email database so that you will either keep your subscribers—or at least prevent too many clicking the ‘unsubscribe’ option? Care, Clear Communication, and Curation A recent e-Marketer article (Gmail’s batch unsubscribes are here—is your email strategy ready?) offered three best practices to follow for email deployment (and which answer the questions above). Every email—to every recipient—should be personalized and tailored to their specific needs and wants. Make sure the message of a particular email offers clear value and useful takeaways. Perhaps most importantly, respect each recipient’s choice of how often they receive an email communication from your brand or business. (If this rule had been followed all along, there may well have been no need for Google to invent and implement Manage Subscriptions.) This e-Marketer piece perfectly sums up the recent developments of Google’s Manage Subscriptions and the corresponding importance of email relevancy: Gmail just turned inboxes into intent filters. Every send must earn its keep. A Note to Brands and Businesses that Have Followed Best Practices for Email Deployment If you have been curating and segmenting your email database on a regular basis, but still notice unsubscribes, this is not cause for concern. The e-Marketer article points out this is an opportunity to reset your database by clearing names that are most likely inactive users. By doing so, you will improve sender reputation, engagement, and deliverability among interested subscribers. If managing or reorganizing your email strategy proves to be too overwhelming, get in touch with The EGC Group. We can help. Are you familiar with our Email Engagement Engine? True to its name, this EGC specialty focuses on engaging your customers with content they will want to read!
