Warriors, please get me back into email responders
Visits from email accounted for 43% of my new subscriptions.
And then Mailchimp asked me to delete the list because of a high level of spam complaints.
Warriors, please help me work out what went so bad, and how I can get back in the game.
The free ebook was "how to learn a particular language online". It's a specific language. From what I could tell, the emails were highly relevant to the subscribers. But obviously enough of them thought the contrary.
Some factors, from I could work out:
- Getting autoresponders was also mixed in with manual mailouts when I had news. Perhaps people got sick of it if they got both an autoresponder and a manual mailout within days or hours.
- Despite double opt-in, perhaps it was not obvious enough that you were signing up to the mailing list.
- One of my manual mailouts was quite identical to a previous one ("I'm doing the same webinar again in case you missed the first one"). That second webinar mailout got a particularly high spam rate.
- Perhaps asking for their first name at subscription would have helped to personalise email, helping somewhat with targetting.
- The "From" name had my first name plus the name of the site. I though that was a reasonable compromise.
- The unsubscribe link was at the very top of each email.
- The emails were in HTML (with text alternative version), matching closely to the site's template. Perhaps using just plain email would make them look less automated.
P.P.S. Viral Marketing Doesn't Work ... Tell Everyone You Know! ;)
Stop by Paul's Pub - my little hangout on Facebook.