Why Do People Unsubscribe From Newsletters?

You know when you sit down to write your quarterly newsletter and you really don’t have a clue of what to say?

So you fill it up with a news piece on your latest product or service, include a link or two to other people's interesting industry articles and maybe mention that you will be moving offices next month, oh, and Cindy is leaving. You hit send. Done for another three months. It’s because it’s too hard that you only send it quarterly and not monthly or even weekly, but at least you are sending one out regularly.

So what is wrong with this scenario? If so many people do it this way, you mustn’t be too far off right?

Wrong. Your customers want answers to their problems.

In the B2B space, most companies have the same issues:

1. They want sales and marketing ideas
2. They want to improve productivity of the operation and the team
3. They want to understand and make use of their data
4. They need help planning and forecasting
5. They want to keep their existing customers as well as add new ones

Your newsletter is only a part of your touch point process. There are many other ways you touch your customer, on the telephone, direct mail, in person and via your marketing campaigns but your newsletter is a very important and influential part of it.

If your customers love what you send them each time, they find it useful and relevant to them without needing to spend a whole lot of time reading it, then they won’t unsubscribe. People only unsubscribe if they are not getting value or usefulness from it.

Next time you send out your newsletter, before you hit send, run it past your internal barometer. Does it solve any of your customer’s problems? If it does, hit send, if it doesn’t, start again.

Full disclosure: My company Blue Banana creates newsletter and other content specifically on the areas above so that you can give your customers answers to their problems.

For comments: What do you typically put in your newsletters and how often do you send them?

I do hope you follow my posts in the future.

My latest book “Start with Hello” (Wiley) is out now and talks about how to meet more people you don’t currently know. You can get a complimentary sample of a chapter from here. You might also be interested in The Say Hello Project, which took place recently.