Learn from your losses

I've been spending a bit of time unsubscribing lately. I love to read, I'm a news junkie, and I love to see what others have to say about the state of the marketing industry. But there can be too much information, especially when so much of it seems like exactly the same message. Not to pick on this group, but can you really have a daily column about marketing to mom's? Do you need to tell people about your packaging conference every day?

But the interesting thing is that of all the email subscriptions I cancelled, only one asked me why I was done with their newsletter. This is an opportunity to understand how you can make your product better, but instead of putting in a simple question on the unsubscribe form, they just lose a customer and never know why.

Most businesses don't get the opportunity to hear a final word from a lost customer. They just go away. If you are sending an email newsletter, don't annoy an already annoyed customer by trying to mine them for a long survey, but ask one simple question:

We'd like to know why you're unsubscribing is it because:

a) I have too many emails

b) I don't find value in your content

c) I've changed jobs, & this is no longer relevant to me

d) It's not you, it's me

Craft an easy question, offer simple solutions to gain information, and if you see a trend that there's something wrong with your content, change it. Whatever you do, don't forget to learn from your losses.