Here are the top takeaways from our newsletter unsubscribe research, in no particular order.ġ. We observed participants as they selected 3–5 emails from their personal inboxes and went through the process of unsubscribing or managing their subscriptions. Nine women and seven men between the ages of 19 and 46 participated in this study. One of our studies for the Sixth Edition of the Marketing Email and Newsletter Design report was focused on the unsubscribe experience. It’s easier - one click.” It’s much better to give your users an easy way out of their subscriptions. One user said, “If I can’t find the unsubscribe link quickly, I’ll hit Send to Spam. This is as easy as a click of a button in many email clients (and will reduce the deliverability of your messages to other subscribers). Worse, if you make it too difficult for people to unsubscribe, users will report your emails as spam in order to no longer receive them. It’s best to politely let them go and maintain their respect for the future. Keep in mind that, if people keep getting unwanted newsletters, the messages will start to backfire and become regular reminders that they’re annoyed with your company. Users may still like your brand, they just no longer want to receive your emails. It’s not in your best interest to make it difficult to unsubscribe, or use snarky language with recipients choosing to leave. In this case, people want to be removed from the corresponding mailing list.Īlthough users no longer want to receive your emails, the opt-out experience is still important, and should still be designed well. They also value the ability to sign up and remain on mailing lists, but sometimes a newsletter that was once relevant no longer is. In our research, we found that recipients do value newsletters. That said, newsletters continue to be an important communication channel between organizations and their audiences. The truth is, we can’t possibly pay attention to all those messages - thus, many of us seek ways to curate subscriptions and control the type and amount of email that we get. We subscribed to some of these newsletters knowingly, but to other lists we were automatically added when we interacted with the corresponding company. We are inundated with marketing email and newsletters from hundreds of mailing lists. People are struggling to maintain control of their inboxes.

Clear email subscriptions