Implementing newsletter subscription center best practices is the fastest way to turn a high unsubscribe rate into a loyal, highly-segmented community of brand advocates.
Plus, it can help your brand!
Here are the top 10 tips for a newsletter.
- Easy Unsubscribe
- Specific topics
- Email Frequency
- Snooze or pause button
- Entertainment
- Keep things simple
- Interactive Polls
- Mobile Response
Keep reading, and I’ll give a talk about all these tips in more detail and a nifty cheat code that will make your subscribers eager to await your emails.
Preference Center Audit Tool
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Why a one-click unsubscribe improves sender reputation
I think this follows the golden rule!
Do unto others as you wish they did to you.
Would you want to be on a newsletter where it’s difficult to unsubscribe? Plus, if someone doesn’t want to be on our newsletter, do you really want them there?
Making the process of unsubscribing easy also builds trust.
The last thing you want is for readers on your newsletter not be able to unsubscribe and then start marking your emails as spam.
Email Income Estimator
*This is an estimate based on average industry click-through and conversion rates. Actual results vary by engagement.
Benefits of topic-based email segmentation for personalization
This is an amazing strategy.
When someone first joins our newsletter, a great idea is to ask them what their interests are. Now the easiest way to do this is by them choosing multiple-choice.
Keeping things simple is the way to go, so maybe 3 options. Such as…
- Someone is a newbie
- Someone knows some
- Advanced user
This way, you can tailor the newsletter to each person.
Someone who is advanced doesn’t want to get the newbie newsletter. They will get bored, right? Sending content to someone who is a newbie on really advanced things is also not good!
This improves the user experience and is, overall, a wonderful idea.
Another idea would be to have 3 newsletters on different topics. Maybe you’re in the dog training niche, they could be.
- Exercise
- Health
- Training
Then, when someone is done with 1 topic, they automatically move to another. This way, the most valuable content is right in front of the person who is interested.
They will also be more likely to open the emails!
Optimal email frequency settings to prevent inbox fatigue
This is another interesting idea.
It can lower your unsubscribe rate. 59% of users unsubscribe because they feel they get too many emails.
Instead of the ultimatum of stay or leave (these are not good for relationships), it’s a compromise.
Plus, if someone chooses to hear from you once a week, they are more likely to open that email then ignoring a bunch of daily ones.
Most importantly, it can show that you value someone’s time!
Most autoresponders have this option.
If you don’t have a domain name, an amazing option is this autoresponder. It’s an all-in-one tool, which you can start for free.
You can manage up to 2,000 contacts, build 3 sales funnels, and host one online course without ever opening your wallet.
Plus, it’s user-friendly with a drag-and-drop editor. I use this one, which is similar, but you need a domain, and you can send more emails for free.
Reducing unsubscribes with an email snooze or pause button
Instead of someone unsubscribing, you can give them an option to pause the newsletter.
58% of people would rather pause a subscription than cancel it entirely. Also, it’s much harder to get someone to subscribe AGAIN than have a pause.
Oh, and both platforms I spoke about have an option to include a 30-day pause near the unsubscribe button.
Having both options is great!
Interactive entertainment ideas for higher click-through rates
This is the secret sauce that not many people talk about.
If your emails are entertaining, you can get away with MORE stuff (break the rules).
I know of some copywriters who don’t follow any rules and email multiple times a day, but because they are SO entertaining, they get away with it.
In the age of AI, entertainment REALLY is your super weapon!
So, how the HECK do you make emails more entertaining?
Well, learning from MUCH better copywriters and 15 years of my own experience I’m giving away a cheat sheet for free.
This shows some easy ways to make your stuff not boring. This will improve open rates, reads, and most importantly, conversions.
Improving email readability to increase subscriber engagement
We as humans like to make things more complicated than they are.
This is why my email newsletter is VERY basic.
Better a bad email newsletter than NO email newsletter!
In the search for perfection, some people don’t do anything. I’ve noticed this trend when talking to people too.
So, I recommend making a VERY basic email, then slowly starting with just 1 idea, and try to improve upon it.
Having that baseline of something is better than nothing.
Again, you can always improve your email newsletter down the line, too.
Using interactive polls to collect zero-party data
Email providers like Gmail and Outlook track engagement.
SO, if you run an interactive poll, it’s engagement and keeps your emails out of the spam folder.
Another reason is feedback for yourself on where you can improve. This can directly improve your email newsletter better than anything else.
A third reason is it can help you come up with ideas for content.
If you run a poll and maybe people feel they struggle in one area, then you know what to create content about.
If you do daily emails, then once a week could be a good time for a poll. If you do weekly emails, then maybe once a month.
Also, instead of making the poll the “entire” email, you can have a PS. section at the bottom just to see what they think.
The truth is, we both are probably going to be staring at a computer screen a lot, so why not protect our eyes?
One easy fix is blue light-blocking glasses.
They work by absorbing or reflecting a portion of the high-energy visible light. This high-energy visible light makes your eyes have to work much harder, and this leads to digital eye strain.
Laboratory tests show that over-exposure to high-intensity blue light can damage light-sensitive cells in the retina (which these glasses can block).
Too much exposure can also make it harder to fall asleep! You can see what type of deals are on Amazon with these glasses that protect your eyes.
Of course, taking a break every 30 minutes or 60 minutes and looking at something far away is good! Sometimes this is hard to do if you get in the groove, right?
Mobile-responsive email preference center best practices
Most people read on their phones.
When you make an email newsletter, it’s not a bad idea to see how it looks on mobile. I know that with my website, I had to change some things because they appear differently than on my computer.
Also, I don’t have images in the email, just to keep things simple.
If you have a button like “Click Here,” it should be at least 44 x 44 pixels for mobile.
Closing: newsletter subscription center best practices
I hope this post might have been helpful.
Email is amazing because it bypasses algorithms that can change. When I got started over 15 years ago with trying to earn money online, it was “all about building a list.”
Today, it’s never been more important to “build this list.”
Even with a tiny list, you can make some good income. I wrote a massive post that shares 11 steps to earning more money with a tiny list.
Have a wonderful day.