How Poor Segmentation Turns Into Unsubscribes
Unsubscribe! We've all done it... hit that "unsubscribe" link at the bottom of a marketing email. Only to see that same business back in your inbox the very next week.
"Didn't I unsubscribe?," you ask.
Yes, you most likely did. But not from all of the emails they looped you into.
We recently experienced this with a company after requesting a white paper. Almost instantly, they bombarded our accounts with dozens of emails, on unrelated topics of no relevance to the original relevance (read: permission).
Like most of us in this situation, we just deleted the repeating emails for a few weeks until realizing it was too much. En route to unsubscribing, we detoured to the "manage your preferences" page.
That's where it showed the company had automatically enrolled us for every type of email they have — all ten (!!!):
Premium, “to get the most out of our account”, learn more about product features, and see what's next on the customer roadmap.
Onboarding, to understand the company and how to use it to have more effective communication with anyone.
Personality Hub Subscription, for timely updates with the latest blog posts.
Learning about DISC, educational content about your engagements.
Feedback Emails, to offer your feedback and help us improve.
Premium Onboarding, to help you get the most of your subscription.
Partner Updates, insider updates on what's going on inside the company for Partners.
One-to-One, which they described as One-to-one emails. (Duh.)
Partner Onboarding, to help get the most from a partnership with the company.
Educational Content, to learn about how personality impacts your communication and behaviors.
All based off one request for a stand-alone white paper. While the company may have disclosed in fine print that contacts would be added ad nauseum, It very clearly violated our perceived agreement.
Folks, this is not about simple email hygiene. It’s the lifeblood of your nurturing flywheel. Your sales prospects (whether consumers, investors or otherwise) lend you very few chances to engage. Lose that opportunity through a miscalculated opt-out, and your internal stakeholders are left wondering “why the campaign didn't work” — while your marketing or sales prospect has potentially disappeared forever.
No amount of sophisticated funnel engineering or creative email messaging can regain what you’ve lost — which in this case is permission. Tread wisely.