A detail that helped me avoid losing subscribers

It can definitely help your unsubscribe rate in some markets. Then there is the flip side where a message like that actually makes your emails sounds less personal, I think. I mean how many times do you email your friends or family and say something like that at the beginning of the email? Never.

So your message really needs to be congruent with the image your are trying to portray and the relationship you are trying to build. If you are trying to get on a personal level with your subscribers then I probably wouldn't use a line like that at the beginning of the email because right away it changes the tone of the email.

You also need to remember that decreasing your unsubscribe rate is not always a good thing. I can't remember which marketer it was but they used to say that if you are not getting any unsubscribes then you are not marketing hard enough. I tend to agree with that. If without a line like that you are getting some unsubscribes, well fine. They are probably your time wasters anyway. The people who are truly passionate about you and what you stand for will not unsubscribe.

I believe that this message is like a formality.

I didn't think that it could have a negative effect, but perhaps you are right in this point.

About the people who are passionate about what I have to say, I agree that they won't unsubscribe, but perhaps it is a good idea to care also about those who are not so interested on my messages, because someday some message may make them care more about my words.

Perhaps these indifferent subscribers are not meaningful and never will be. However, who knows?

I'd rather leave the unsubscribe link at the bottom like most autoresponders usually do.

There is also an unsubscribe link in the end of the message.

This sentence in the beginning of the email message with the unsubscribe link seems to decrease the unsubscribe rate.

It is useful in case your subscriber forgot that he/she had subscribed.

Don’t you sometimes receive messages from someone who was not sending you messages for a long time, and you don't remember them?

The sentence reminding you that you are a subscriber helps you understand that you are not receiving a message from a spammer, even if you don’t remember when you had subscribed.

You are probably right because I’m not building a relationship with my subscribers.

Only now I can see many of the mistakes I made with the follow ups I had prepared. This is why I'm improving my messages.

Perhaps this sentence in the beginning of the email should be used when we are trying to get connected again with an email list that was just resting after receiving our follow-up series and never receiving anything else from us again.

I believe that way of saying is very polite and people will give you respect for that. It means telling people that you have zero intention of spamming them and you will not do anything that will bother them. This is a must for anyone who wants to build relation with their list, especially in the first newsletter.

Yes, this is a polite way to make your subscribers calm down and feel that they are respected.

WillR said that this sentence in the beginning of the message is somehow strange and indicates that there is a certain distant between you and your subscribers. I believe that perhaps he is right because this kind of defense is somehow strange between friends.

However, if you don’t have a strong relationship with your subscribers, perhaps it is a good idea.

I agree with WillR when he says that the best solution is to build a strong relationship with your subscribers, but how many messages can you keep sending?

How many email messages do you prepare in a follow up series?

Or, do you usually send regular broadcasts?

In any case, if your contact with your list is not so frequent, or if you are trying to send again email messages to an email list you had abandoned after a series of emails, I believe that it is a good idea to remind them that they are subscribed and that it’s very easy to unsubscribe.

When you show to your subscribers that you respect them, they don’t feel that they need to defend themselves.

I won't put the Unsubscribe link at the beginning of the email, because it delays the reader from seeing my content.

On my first email, I let me readers know that "I will be sending tips, free downloads, and affiliate promotions." I also advise that "I generally mail daily and sometimes twice daily."

It is very important to do this in the first email, because that is when you set expectations in your subscriber's mind.

In that same email, I tell them that "if they ever decide that they don't want to receive more of my emails, there is an unsubscribe link at the bottom of every email."

Again, I am setting expectations and letting them know that "it is their choice to stay or go" from my list.

On day two, I start right in with free tips for a couple days. Then I drop my first product promotion with a product review.

With each list, the automated emails bounce between free tips, free downloads, and product reviews -- one a day. Then when I have a new product review to share, I mail it immediately as a broadcast.

The products that readers liked when it was broadcast, get dropped into the daily sequence messages, so that others in the future will be able to see those messages.

If I ever get a couple of complaints close together, I send out an email telling people if they don't want to be on my list, they should unsubscribe. I don't want anyone on my list who doesn't want to be there.

As the list owner, it is up to you to set and manage expectations on your list.

If you fail to tell people what to expect, then it is your fault if they are surprised at what they see.

And, when you tell people in the beginning that you might be mailing twice daily, any person who does not unsub right then has given you permission to mail twice daily.

When I don't mail daily, which occasionally happens, people might miss me...

But people will seldom get mad because I mail too often, b/c in that first email, I set the idea in their mind that I would.

This sentence:

is totally appropriate. If you are sending a newsletter. For other types of lists, not so much.

The principal behind it is sound.

Will made the point that friends usually don't send unsubscribe links. True. But I didn't have to put my email in an opt-in form in order for my friend to get my email address, either. Nor do my friends only email me about a specific subject, nor do they pitch products unless I ask for a recommendation.

(Most) subscribers aren't stupid. They know that when they put an email into a form in return for a bribe that they aren't connecting with their new BFF.

Like Bill said, it's all about setting expectations and then living up to them.

I wouldn't make it the first line in my emails because it'll likely be the sentence that shows up after the subject line BEFORE they've opened the email. So when they see it in their inbox, they'll see the heading of the email then that unsubscribe sentence and it won't exactly entice them to open it.

The key to avoid getting unsubscribes from your lists is to provide valuable unique content to your list members and to avoid spamming them with junk low quality offers.

Develop trust with your list and they will trust you (by buying the affiliate offers that you recommend to them)

There are a few lists I'm subscribed to that have a whole
paragraph at the beginning telling me that I subscribed
and when I subscribed, etc. I hate having to scroll through
that first paragraph to get to the "meat" of the message.

But I've never tested this so maybe it works for the
list owner. Personally, I'd shy away from this EXCEPT
for list that you broadcast to quite infrequently.

-Ray Edwards

I received a few messages with this information too, and I liked this detail.

I believe that this sentence in the introduction of the email message is a nice formality.

It also has to do with everyone’s personality. I like to be gentle.

Since I’m not an internet marketer (my field is mental health) I cannot be aggressive, and I don’t like to be aggressive. I like to be very kind.

I write this sentence (in a smaller font) in the introduction of all my email messages for more than one year I guess, probably during two years already, I don’t remember exactly when I started using it, and I noticed that less people are unsubscribing. Almost nobody is unsubscribing, while in the beginning (many years ago) many people were unsubscribing.

I was not paying attention to my email messages because I was doing other things online, but I’m glad that many warriors helped me understand the importance of email marketing.

So, now I’m using the traffic I have thanks to my subscribers and sending them to my Squidoo lenses, to my websites and blog, while I was not using this traffic because I didn't care about sending more email messages to my lists.

I had no time to care about this matter because I was busy with other activities, while at the same time I was looking for traffic generation methods… without using the traffic I already have from my subscribers. This was a mistake.

Now I’m trying to write better email messages, and I’m trying to keep sending messages to my loyal subscribers.

I hope to be loved for being kind.

I was writing like a teacher, this is my style. My messages are basically lessons. I always try to make my readers have the intention to learn more about something.

Perhaps I should write with the intention of triggering a different response from my readers. This is a good suggestion.

I think that I have seen this done before where the unsubscribe was placed at the top rather than the bottom, but I don't see that very often though.

All that I can say here is that if it works, then great. Keep doing what you're doing, but as far as keeping subscribers, well, that is another story because there are many reasons why people leave your list.

It could be that you're not providing good quality information to the reader, it could be that they have just simply lost interest in the topic of the list, or it could even be for other reasons such as situations out of their control or even health related reasons.

All list owners loose subscribers. That's normal and it is expected to happen from time to time. You'll just have to face that fact and keep on building your list no matter what comes your way.

Excitement is really very good.

I will try to cause excitement. Thank you for this lesson!