It’s Not You, It’s Me: Why Marketers Should Embrace (Subscriber) Break-Ups.

You’re reading The Dose, a digest of trending topics and offerings that matter to your business, from your Networked partner, Digitas. TLDR? This edition posits that marketers should view rising email unsubscribes as a growth opportunity, suggesting a shift in communication to other channels like SMS or social media, and advocating for amicable parting to allow future re-engagement.

According to a recent Optizmo report, North America is leading the world in email unsubscribes. I could spend this entire article speculating on what may be causing this and why I think unsubscribes are only going to continue to rise throughout 2024, including:

• Personalized, but not personal, communications: Consumers are savvy. They know the wealth of data brands are sitting on about them and expect them to use it to improve their experiences. But brands aren’t living up to expectations. While over two-thirds of consumers recognize that they’re being targeted online, only a third feel like the experiences feel “truly personal.” Further, 7 in 10 are frustrated with supposedly targeted promotions that don’t relate to their personal interests, creating a perfect storm for overwhelmed consumers to pull the plug.
• Marketing Fatigue: According to a recent survey by Optimove, 55% of consumers want to see fewer marketing messages. And what’s more, 81% will unsubscribe from brands that communicate excessively, especially if they feel like they will see the same offers across a brand’s ecosystem. The implications here are twofold: one, brands must respect boundaries and resist the temptation to over-communicate in a misguided attempt at staying top of mind; and two, brands need to have a clear role of channel strategy to avoid being perceived as repetitive across channels.
• Inbox overload: Let’s be real: our inboxes are out of control right now, so it’s unsurprising that consumers recently ranked email as the most irritating channel. In the first half of 2023 alone, marketers on Omnisend’s platform sent more than 10.5 billion marketing emails, almost 55x more than their SMS and web push messages combined! And with the June 2024 enforcement deadline for one-click unsubscribe in Gmail and Yahoo looming, expect consumers to be ruthless when it comes to clawing back control of their inboxes.

But I’m not. Instead, I want to talk to you about why increasing unsubscribes isn’t something to be afraid of – and in fact, I’d go so far as to say they’re an opportunity for growth at large for brands. At Digitas, we talk a lot about relationships and how, when you get down to it, brand-consumer relationships aren’t that dissimilar from dating. With both, our goal is to get someone to commit to us long-term, choose us over anyone else, and shout that love from the rooftops. But just like in dating, the reality is that you’re not going to click with everyone. And that’s okay. In fact, embracing the unsubscribe could be a secret weapon for your broader marketing strategy to drive loyal fans. Hear me out:

Bloated lists are a bad date waiting to happen. It’s easy to fall into the fallacy of having a large subscriber base. But that means nothing if a large subset of your list is leaving you unread or breadcrumbing you, engaging just enough to tease a discount out of you before going back to ignoring you. A list filled with inactive subscribers can skew your data, making it harder to glean insights that can be leveraged across all addressable channels. These folks aren’t contributing to your list health and ultimately drag down your engagement rates, not just on email but potentially on social or SMS or anywhere else they might be lurking. And this is all in the name of what? Bragging that you have 10 million subscribers? Subscriber base size is the ultimate vanity metric, and in 2024, we should all have moved beyond this anyway. Don’t be the 5’10” guy claiming to be 6’2” on dating apps. No one likes him.

It’s preferable to ghosting. Yes, the rejection of being told “it’s just not working for me” stings, but just like when you’re dating, it’s better to not be strung along. Really, these people are giving us a gift – the chance to accept that they may prefer to hear from us via SMS, push, or on social and letting us redirect our efforts there. If they were to stop engaging, it’d be a lot harder to pinpoint where we went wrong or what we could have done differently. When someone physically unsubscribes, they’re forcing us to accept the reality that what we’re doing isn’t resonating and allows us to be better in the future. Maybe our pickup line was too corny, our profile was misleading, or perhaps we weren’t a good match after all – digging deeper into what is turning our subscribers off can be just as enlightening as understanding what is working.

It doesn’t have to mean goodbye everywhere. Just because we lose someone in email doesn’t necessarily mean the overarching relationship is dead. They might still be into us, just not over email. Just like a date might be super into texting but avoids picking up their phone to talk like the plague, someone who unsubscribes from us might be more than open to hearing from us elsewhere on other channels. That unsubscribe could be a signal for you to shift your approach and focus on forging a connection on social, over SMS, their physical inbox, or retargeted in media. We can use this data for more targeted campaigns or outreach in their channel of preference instead of trying to force something that isn’t working for either of us. With the proper identity linkage, data resolution, and content automation, you two can pick up right where you left off.

But if it is goodbye, exit gracefully. There’s no denying it: break-ups suck. And when you’re on the receiving end of one, it is incredibly tempting to wallow – block their number, delete all your photos of them on Instagram, and release a surprise double album with 31 songs chronicling the demise of your relationship. We’ve all been there. But deep down, I think we all know that there’s more to be gained by keeping things friendly. Maybe circumstances will change, and you’ll be a better fit when after some time has passed and you’re both a little older and wiser. Or perhaps they’ll introduce you to their super-hot friend, who is a better fit for your brand than they ever were. Like a thoughtful break-up, you want to end your relationship on a good note and leave the door open for them to consider your brand in the future. In this case, that may mean giving them the chance to let us know about a change in their preferences or to subscribe to other channels that allow us to keep growing the relationships on their terms.

Just like in the dating world, not every person you court will be a love match. And that’s okay. Embracing unsubscribes is the marketing equivalent of taking control of your dating life. It frees us from wasting our time and energy on people who were never going to commit to us, so we can focus our time and energy on those we can see a long-term future across all our addressable channels. And for that reason, I am permitting you to free yourself from the burden of the unsubscribe. You aren’t a failure: you’re letting go of a situationship that isn’t serving you so that you can focus your attention on those who value what you offer, making them your biggest brand advocates.

Your Networked Digitas Solution: 

At Digitas, we view any known customer as an addressable relationship across paid, owned, and earned channels. Each customer is an opportunity to encourage measurable actions from like to love to loyalty. As we move towards a cookie-less future, we help brands take control of data, maximize owned channels, and enhance experiences with assets that become more intelligent as customers engage with your brand. Want to learn more? Contact our head of Growth: linda.piggot@digitas.com