Boosting Email Deliverability: Why Unsubs are Good

(Part Two of a Three Part Series on How to Improve Email Deliverability)

by Wendy Roth & Shannon Coulter

Can unsubscribes be good? No sender ever wants to lose an address, of course, but when one turns bad or a recipient asks to stop receiving mail, it can actually be a blessing in disguise.

Why? Because spammers work hard to make their mail look as legitimate as possible—in other words, to make it look like your mail. So aside from what you send, recipients and ISPs also recognize you as a good sender by how you behave. A clear, easy, and effective unsubscription process is the perfect opportunity to distinguish yourself as one of the good guys—which can really help if blockages or other delivery problems should they ever arise.

Here are three more reasons to smile as you’re removing email addresses from your list:

1. Unsub requests keep your list vital and responsive

   One of the strongest tenets of the federal CAN-SPAM law requires senders to honor all unsubscribe requests within ten days, and as of mid-May, the Federal Trade Commission is proposing that the number of days be reduced to three.

   Rather than view this new development as a stricture, however, consider that this requirement is actually likely to work in favor of most marketing goals. By processing unsubscribe requests quickly, lists are kept populated with recipients who actually want to receive your mail—and traditional direct marketing wisdom tells us that such recipients tend to be the most interested and responsive to offers and other messages.
   
   So while there’s no doubt sending environment is becoming more regulated, the legitimate email marketer should greet unsub requests gladly and view them just as a gardener does pruning: as an opportunity to keep your list well-formed and fruitful.
   
   
2. Removing bad addresses has long-term deliverability benefits

   Some marketers have a hard time saying goodbye to bad addresses, rationalizing that there’s no harm in trying to send to truly undeliverable addresses if there’s a chance of getting through.

   But this strategy can actually do a great deal of harm to your overall deliverability. ISPs quickly lose patience with senders who repeatedly send to inactive addresses, since processing erroneous mail uses their resources. In addition, sending to a high percentage of “dead” addresses can be interpreted by the ISP as an indication that your list may have been harvested, and that you—the sender—are a spammer.

   So if an address bounces twice, sacrifice it to the cause of greater deliverability and overall ISP relations. Set your software or service to remove it automatically after a couple of failures—and don’t look back.

3. Unsubs are infinitely preferable to the other way recipients can ask to stop receiving your mail

   When recipients ask you to remove them from your list, it means that they’re choosing to follow your unsubscribe process, instead of complaining to their ISP that your mail is spam. In this sense, unsubscribe requests are a sign from recipients that they trust you to honor their requests. If there’s no easy way for them to unsubscribe, or if past unsubscribe requests have been ignored or failed, they’re much more likely to hit the “this is spam” button.

   When a recipient unsubscribes from your list, remember that you’re simply losing a single email address. On the other hand, when enough recipients click the “this is spam” button, your mail could ultimately be blocked ISPs, or worse—you could be added to blacklists.

Summary

Overall, there are big benefits to getting the dead weight—bad and unsubscribing addresses—off your lists as soon as possible. Long-term deliverability stays high, while your lists stay clean and responsive. Make sure that your email marketing solution is capable of processing bounces and unsubscribe requests immediately and automatically, and then set it up to do so. Not only will your lists stay lively and active, but as a practice, it identifies you as one of the good guys—a responsible sender—and keeps you in good standing with the ISPs, the law, and your recipients.

Contact us at editor@lyris.com to share your ideas. We may include it in the next issue of Making Mail Work!