Member-only story
Why you should never hide your email unsubscribe link
A cautionary tale of email deliverability, retention, and LTV.
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Every so often, I do a big email prune.
So, there I was in bed last Sunday morning going through my 2,000 unread emails.
And I saw one where I thought to myself
“I swear I’ve unsubscribed from this brand before…”
It was my pet insurance provider.
So I click through to unsubscribe but find it so incredibly hard to unsubscribe that I give up.
I exited the flow.
Staying subscribed ‘till my next cull.
Then I realise:
“This must have been what happened in my last email prune: I gave up.”
It was a small thing, but it really bugged me.
It made me distrust the brand just that little bit more. I’m giving them £40 a month for Stanley’s (🐶) insurance, but they won’t even let me unsubscribe?
Weird.
After that point, I started to pay attention to email unsubscribe flows in my inbox.
How easy is it to unsubscribe? How do I feel towards the brand as a result? How many clicks does it take me?
I collected all the unsubscribe flows together, reviewed them on a macro level and found that there’s a spectrum — some good, some bad, and some… a complete car crash.
Let’s go through them in more detail and talk about why — even though this feels like a small detail — your email unsubscribe flow is crucial to retention, lifetime value and brand affinity through CRM.
And why, as counter-intuitive as it seems, you should actively encourage people to unsubscribe.
First, the theory of why letting people go gracefully impacts your email performance so much.
