The gap between buyers and sellers continues to amaze me. And it always boils down to the simplest, even most obvious things.
Like this one: You work like crazy to get people to sign up to your list. And then, one day, they want to stay subscribed, but they just want to change their address. Are you making that impossible?
At the bottom of your email, is there no option to “change your address” or “manage your subscriptions”? Is there only one option: “Unsubscribe”? When they click on it, do they see a almost-all-white page, with nothing on it but this:
So now what do they have to do? How do they re-subscribe? In this example, I clicked on the only other item on the page – the company logo. This took me to the home page, predictably, and a scan of that page convinced me that there was no way to sign up from there. I looked back at the email – and there was no provision for “Want to sign up with another email?” Or, as one site helpfully suggested, “Did a friend send you this email? Would you like to subscribe?”
Sellers forget that buyers WANT to buy, and this is a prime example. The question for you today is, “What would we be doing if people WANTED to buy from us? How could we make it easy?”
Here’s an example of doing it right, from the Social Media Examiner
I just changed my email address on a number of subscriptions. I would say that only one in 25 emails gave me the option to do something other than unsubscribe, either with a “manage your subscription” or “update your preferences” link at the bottom of the email (next to “unsubscribe”), or, if that information was missing, when you clicked on “unsubscribe,” you went to a page that gave you the option to update your email address.
I think the former option is the best one; you get to choose, right there in the email, if you want to unsubscribe or update your email preferences. You don’t have to click through to know what will be coming next. Your intention is met with a clear avenue to carry out that intention.
