- Be relevant – That’s always been a good idea; now it’s imperative. An ill-targeted email will trigger many more Opt-Outs than a relevant one.
- Be compelling – Make people want to receive your next communication. Make them want to open the next email. This is a much higher bar than simply delivering a message effectively.
- Consider doing less – The more you send people, the more it starts to feel like spam. Be selective. Don’t send everything to every prospect.
- Offer granular Opt-Outs – People may not want to opt out of everything, just certain types of communication. Make it easy to selectively opt out or you encourage global Opt-Out.
- On exit, ask to maintain a connection – When you accept the Opt-Out (as all responsible marketers must), ask if it’s okay to contact them again in 6 months to see if they’d like to opt back in. You never know.
- Measure it – Opt-Outs are an important metric. Measure them and factor them into any campaign’s ROI report.
- Use some automation – We’re working with a lead nurturing and scoring system that makes it a lot easier to segment (by demographics and behaviour); to automate campaigns; and to track responses and Opt-Outs. Talk to us about it.
- Keep filling the top of the funnel – Compensate for the Opt-Out factor by getting more people to opt in!
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Comments
Doug Kessler December 8th, 2008
For anyone out there who uses a lot of analytics, one of our clients, Portrait Software, has a tool that takes these negative effects into account.
It’s called Uplift Optimizer:
http://www.portraitsoftware.com/Products/portrait_uplift_optimizer
Bottom line: much more accurate metrics that don’t ignore the downside.