How and why to say goodbye to an unsubscribing subscriber

Saying goodbye to a subscriber is not always a failure. In fact, a reduction in your database can help you improve, optimise and save money. Therefore, saying goodbye and thanking a user who is leaving is essential. Find out how to do it by reading our post!

why is a good and kind farewell necessary?

The welcome email starts the conversation with a new contact and the thank you email generates a new communication channel with them. But what is the use of a good good goodbye message?

That screen is likely to be the last thing the subscriber will hear from you, so you have a responsibility to make a good final impression. But you also have a unique opportunity to try to make them think twice. However, even if they ultimately decide to leave, you can learn a lot about why they made their decision.

Reasons why a subscriber chooses to leave

When a subscriber decides to unsubscribe, it's for a reason. Among the most common are:

• You invade their inbox. If you send an endless amount of emails, the subscriber will not even be able to read them and on top of that, you will make other communications get lost among all the information they receive from you.

• Your content is not interesting or you always repeat the same thing in every email. Many times strategies are designed for the same brand and there is a tendency to repeat the same scheme, so that the contents do not bring anything new, and even the structure is the same. In worse cases, marketing designers do not even modify the design of the email. The user feels bored and seeing that they do not get anything new, they simply decide to withdraw from the community.

• They don't feel special to the brand or think they are not important to the brand, because they are treated as mere statistics and it is better to think of the customer rather than the number.

• They cannot access content from other devices such as tablets or mobiles. Brands should pay attention to this detail: it is necessary that the content can be adapted to the screens of devices other than the computer.

• They only receive emails with products for sale and users are not always in the mood to make purchases when they access their inbox, hence the importance of campaigns that avoid only selling and are more concerned with creating engagement.

• Because you don't personalise your emails. If you have valuable data about your subscribers such as name, gender, country, age and even interests, how can you not take advantage of it to create campaigns that show them that you know them and distinguish them from the crowd of your base?

• Because they don't recognise you: they don't even remember when they agreed to give you their email address, what you do, or why they would want to know more about you.

how do you say goodbye?

1. Comply with the law. It is important to remember the duty to provide subscribers with a simple and free system to unsubscribe from our newsletter. Not only out of respect and good practice, but also because it is one of the legal obligations set out in the LSSI, the law that regulates electronic communications. Every email we send must have a visible link for the recipient to unsubscribe.

2. Connect in other channels. The end of your communication via email or electronic mail does not have to be the end of your relationship. Be smart and take advantage of this final message to propose new points of contact.

3. Ask why. Just as we say that everything communicates, you also have to take into account that you learn from everything. Every feedback you receive from users is a potential learning experience: it will either help you to support the actions you take or make you rethink a few things. A subscriber who unsubscribes from the newsletter is a great learning opportunity. Why not ask them their reasons for unsubscribing?

4. Last chance to differentiate yourself: The goodbye message is your last chance to do something different, to entertain or add value to your followers, so you need to work on it.

5. Take care of the language. Something as apparently simple as the texts of that farewell message can make the difference between a standard farewell and a different one.

6. Adapt your message to any device. Although we take it for granted, adapting content to mobile devices is still not a priority for many brands.

7. Don't send an unsubscribe confirmation email. This is a very common technique. If you don't believe it, try unsubscribing from some newsletters and you will see how, in a matter of seconds, you have several confirmation messages in your inbox. Confirmation message that says absolutely nothing more than a confirmation. Big brands like Netflix also do this. This type of message does not arouse any interest in re-subscribing even though it has a call to action that proposes it. It has to be something more creative, more visual and attention-grabbing.