Why You Shouldn’t Mind Unsubscribers
Despite inevitable protestations to the contrary, if you provide high quality information that’s exclusive and original, you won’t get many unsubscribers.
Despite people being swamped with content, there’s a lack of good content and you can provide content that nobody else can if you put your mind to it.
Keep your selling soft, and you won’t get many unsubscribers at all.
You’ll also get high engagement and your subscribers will be intelligent people too.
You will have one problem though: Because you don’t get many unsubscribes, it’ll probably bug you when they do happen.
But ultimately, this is a good thing.
Why?
Let’s find out.
Unsubscribes Are Only A Problem If They’re Frequent And Unrelenting
Let’s start with the inevitable caveat.
If you get a ton of people unsubscribing, you’re either doing something wrong or your targeting is wrong in the first place.
You might be an SEO guy who promises people Social Media knowledge. Then you talk about backlinking and never mention social media, and they unsubscribe. That’s good in a way, but your targeting was off. You’re giving the wrong message to the wrong people.
On the other hand, you might be a social media guy who writes social media messages for people, but you’re constantly pimping your Instagram service every single day without fail, and that pitch takes up 90% of every email you send.
In that case, you’re targeting correctly but you’re not retaining people because your emails themselves aren’t giving them what they want.
So those are the two examples of where it’s a bad thing, and in most cases you’ll know pretty quickly.
In most cases though, you’ll get some unsubscribes every now and then. The exact figures are dependent on your market, your list size, your email frequency and other stuff, but if it’s a small amount, it’s not a problem. In fact… it’s a good thing.
Here’s why.
Unsubscribes Are A Good Thing
Your email list – and extend this to social media, YouTube subscribers, podcast listeners, whatever you want – is a list of potential customers and actual customers.
In this day and age, people give away a lot for free. It’s expected that an authority in a niche will have YouTube videos, blog articles and post incessantly across everywhere.
Then God forbid they charge for anything.
And that’s the point.
You give away stuff for free. If someone doesn’t enjoy your free offerings, then the chances of them becoming a paid customer are low.
When it comes to funnel building, the closer to your sale you get, the more engaged you want your customers to be.
A guy who follows you on Twitter is less engaged than one who signs up for your email list. A guy on your email list is less engaged than someone who is on your list but has bought your $5 ebook.
So when you’re talking about the email list, you’re talking about someone who is engaged and looking to take the step towards being a paid customer and all the benefits that entails.
If a person doesn’t want to receive stuff for free, then they probably won’t want to receive stuff for a price later on.
The Big Picture
Here’s the big picture.
If you provide a high quality service or product with a price relative to that (which you should) then you don’t need many lifetime customers to support you.
So, for instance, if you put out $100 worth of product a year and you target people who’ll pay that $100, then how many people do you really need to be customers?
500 customers give you $50,000 a year. 1000 customers give you a six-figure salary.
That seems like a lot when you’re starting or your email list has twelve people on it, but in the grand scheme of internet business stuff, it’s tiny.
And that’s assuming you’re only charging $100 a year.
There are people that charge $100 a month for subscription programs of various colours and they’re nowhere near partying with the Kardashians. You’ve never heard of them and they’re not internet celebrities, but they don’t need to be.
1,000 customers at $1200 a year is $1,200,000. 1,000 customers as a group will be invisible in the scheme of the internet.
With that in mind… you don’t have to gain that many customers. So it doesn’t pay to worry about people who aren’t going to be your lifetime customers.
And a person who doesn’t want your free stuff is not going to be a lifetime customer, in all likelihood.
They definitely won’t be if you think, “What did I do wrong?” But they might be if you instead think, “Nevermind” and simply add more and more value to the customers you do have.
Final Thoughts
So, we’ve gone through the emotional side in this article: Don’t worry and concentrate on providing big value to your customers. Do this and they will accumulate. Non-customers don’t really matter all that much. You can’t please everyone and if people want to be part of your team, then let them.
We’ve also talked about the technical side: If you put out high quality information that’s relevant and you don’t push too hard on the sales, then your unsubscribes will be low.
The more I go on in business (and arguably businesses,) the more I realise that you should view what you offer as an exclusive club that only a few people will be interested in. This is best for you, because you can concentrate. It’s best for your customers, because your focus means they get more valuable help. It’s also best for your non-customers, because you’re not wasting their time begging for their pennies when it’s not a good fit.
If somebody helps you along the way by unsubscribing, then it makes your job easier.