Email marketing mistakes that lead to unsubscribes

Growing a high-quality mailing list can be a expensive, time-consuming effort, but countless companies take the pain for a simple reason: email marketing is one of the most effective ways to grow a business.
Building a mailing list is only half the battle. The other half: keeping subscribers happy!
Unfortunately, it's extremely easy to make mistakes that drive subscribers away. Here are four of the most common such mistakes.
1. Sending too many emails.
There can easily be too much of a good thing when it comes to email and many companies bombard their subscribers with far more emails than those subscribers expected. This can quickly lead to subscriber attrition.
How to Address
Remember that with email, it's possible to do more with less. Instead of worrying about communicating with subscribers more frequently, focus on making sure each communication packs a punch when it comes to value. Content should be insightful, and calls-to-action should be compelling.
2. Not respecting preferences.
If sending too many emails is one of the best ways to lose subscribers, but not respecting their preferences is one of the best ways to drive them away angry. Important preferences that should always be adhered to include list selections, frequency settings and formatting choices.
How to Address
In many cases, preference violations are a result of poorly-implemented subscriber management systems. As such, it's important to thoroughly test your system on a periodic basis to ensure that preferences are being captured properly and that the systems being used to deliver emails are aware of them.
3. Lack of perceived relevance.
Even if you're sending emails to subscribers at the right frequency and you're respecting their preferences, your emails could be falling far short of expectations if subscribers don't see the emails as being relevant. And irrelevance will eventually lead to one thing: unsubscribes.
How to Address
There are a number of ways to increasing the likelihood that you're delivering relevant emails that are more likely to be of interest to subscribers. Several are:

• Manually soliciting feedback from subscribers to ensure you're in tune with their needs.
• Collecting more granular explicit preference options that allow better subscriber segmentation.
• Tracking open rates and using them to determine which subscribers should receive certain emails.

4. Inconsistency.
If your emails lack consistent branding and their source is not immediately apparent, there's a greater probability that some subscribers may not understand why they've received an email, leading to an unsubscribe.
How to Address
At a minimum, use the same sender name and email wherever possible to reduce the likelihood of confusion about the source of your emails. And, if possible, develop email templates that use consistent visual branding.

To read more articles: EMail Marketing Services