The Secret to Less Unsubscribing and More Engagement

Every day, we strive to provide both an email marketing service and content that can help small business owners thrive. Part of what we do involves connecting with others who also help small businesses and finding out what our subscribers and customers can learn from them.

Tamara Campbell of Xplore Communications happens to be an AWeber customer AND someone who helps small businesses. Xplore helps cities and towns promote themselves and bring traffic to the small businesses in that town. One community benefiting from their services is the Hoboken-Jersey City area. Their marketing campaign is called “HudsonPulse.”

Hudson Pulse consistently sees good open rates and months can go by before someone clicks that unsubscribe link. So what’s the deal? Consistency. Tamara makes sure everything about this email campaign is consistent. We took a look at how she does it and what small business marketing strategies she’s learned.

Put a Web Form on Every Page

If your website has multiple pages, you don’t want visitors to be scrambling to find where you had that sign up form. Set up a side bar and include your form in that, and have that bar appear on every single page.

Check it out on the HudsonPulse site:


Not only is it a convenience, it makes for a clean, organized design.

Send on a Schedule

“Traffic spikes for HudsonPulse.com on Tuesdays when the email goes out.”

Decide when you want to send your emails and how often. Mondays? Fridays? Both? The schedule is really up to you, but once you pick it, stick with it.

HudsonPulse sends weekly emails every Tuesday around 2 p.m. Subscribers know this right away, as it’s on the web form, and they get no more, no less.

“HudsonPulse was initially a print publication. When we decided to go online we knew we need to keep a consistent communication effort for people to know what is going on in their neighborhood – so we started HudsonPulse weekly emails,” says Tamara.

Keep Subject Lines Familiar

Consistency can also work with subject lines. Including the same thing at the beginning of each subject line (like your company name) makes your emails easily recognizable in the inbox.

HudsonPulse handles this by following a formula: the city names followed by the dates being covered:



This consistency allows for subscribers to easily recognize who the email is from and what it’s about.

Design Emails to be Recognizable

Just as you want subscribers to recognize your emails in the inbox, you also want to maintain that familiarity within the email itself. Even something as simple as including your logo at the top of every email can help.

HudsonPulse mimics their website and uses the same layout each week:


The information is fresh every week as different events are featured, but the design remains the same.

Offer an Option to Subscribe to More

Sometimes you may find you have new content to share with your subscriber, but you’re not sure how to introduce it. One thing you can do is start a new list and allow subscribers to sign up to this new list if they’re interested in other emails.

The cities of Hoboken and Jersey City have an event called Hudson Restaurant Week a couple times a year. Those weeks need more emails to update fans what’s going on. Since HudsonPulse is meant for weekly updates, a new list was created. The option to check out the other sites (and their lists) is available in the footer of HudsonPulse:



Instead of confused subscribers, they can decide which lists they want to sign up to.

“People also join the list by signing up at participating restaurants. Our open rate is pretty high for those emails as we only send them 6-8 times a year (mostly over 50%). People usually spread the word about Restaurant Week by forwarding the emails to friends and co-workers,” says Tamara.

Email Marketing Helps!

“My advice for businesses is to not leave email marketing off the marketing list. Even with all the emails that one may receive on a given day, if a person has elected to receive your email your message can still get there. It’s still one of the cheapest forms of marketing outreach.”

-Tamara Campbell

Do You Have High Retention?

What do you do to keep people on your list longer?

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By:
Education Marketing Associate (Crystal Gouldey Moore) on Google

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10 Comments

  1. Stephanie Fischbach

    Thanks for posting, Crystal. The points made here are so true and important, especially in keeping consistent and familiar to your reader. If you lack in both of these areas, your reader won’t recognize or remember you. Being memorable will also be what keeps your reader from SPAMing you.. even if they did opt in to receive your newsletter. Great read!

    6/27/2012 8:40 am
  2. Ayaz

    I am using the same technique as you mention and certainly using sign up forms on each page helps to get the more subscribers and I believe that providing or producing content which helps readers issues certainly get you more subscribers. Thanks for sharing great information.

    6/28/2012 5:44 am
  3. RCR

    Very good and interesting read. I have to agree with your statement, “Decide when you want to send your emails and how often”. This is key to email marketing! Thanks.

    6/28/2012 6:40 am
  4. Jim Tuffin

    With everyone being flooded with emails and so called newsletters every day, it is very important to just stand out ‘above’ the crowd!

    Having a set day each week and an easily recognisable newsletter banner is a great start, but more importantly, is the content. If your readers associate themselves with your content, the regular sending day, and can identify your newsletter easily, they are much more likely to read it!

    If they read it … it will work!

    6/29/2012 2:05 am
  5. Melissa

    Wow – real marketing information I can use – many thanks!

    6/29/2012 5:02 am
  6. Troy Vayanos

    Great tips Crystal,

    I’m currently working on setting a an weekly blog post through Aweber that gets sent to all my subscribers. This will really help me get it started the right way.

    Cheers

    6/30/2012 5:06 pm
  7. Anne Galivan

    I would like to have a higher “open” rate but I will say that I very rarely have anyone unsubscribe from my list.

    I think that is because my readers prefer to keep getting my e-mails and then, depending on the subject for that week, they can decide whether the topic interests them or not. My niche is fairly small (homeschooling) but its members are very eclectic! So what interests one homeschooling family may very well be unimportant to another.

    The few unsubscribes I have had were due to a subscriber no longer homeschooling, or simply not having the time to keep up with all the mail in their inbox! I appreciate that AWeber allows my readers to tell me WHY they are unsubscribing. It helps to know, for example, that the reason for an unsubscribe is not content issues but rather, changes in the reader’s life.

    6/30/2012 7:27 pm
  8. Amy Hagerup

    Great newsletter and awesome tips. I was told to keep the email plain looking but the idea of my blog header on the email for identity sounds good to me. Thanks

    7/4/2012 7:31 pm
  9. Tatiana Blocher

    Good blog! This is why Victoria Secret gets good marketing feedback via their catchy ad mails! I love the way you put emphasis on the importance of newsletters and giving importance to client’s option for subscription. I believe that this strategy would definitely segregate those who are really interested on the site or those who just happened to view the site. Overall, email marketing may be one of the classic online marketing strategy but is surely is effective!

    7/5/2012 1:04 pm
  10. Al

    The idea used by HudsonPulse for subject lines can be a little boring. Sure, you would want to read their email but maybe not always unless you know what it’s about. I think it’s also equally important to mention something about what’s in the message by writing a subject line that will catch their attention.

    7/11/2012 5:05 am

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