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What Causes List Fatigue

There are a number of reasons subscribers ignore or delete your messages. Some are preventable, some aren’t, and it is important for you to be able to tell the difference so you know how to handle it.

Unpreventable:

Subscribers no longer fit demographic - The unpreventable reasons are caused when subscribers’ needs change and they no longer fit into your target demographic. No matter how great your emails are the topic just isn’t relevant to that segment of your audience. This might frighten some marketers but it is a simple fact: people change over time. Some subscribers will move out of your region. Some will retire and won’t need your services for their businesses. Some will go to college and find that they are no longer interested in receiving email updates from their favorite tween boy band. These fluctuations are uncontrollable and should be expected, and this group should be identified and removed from your list as they have a low probability of making a purchase and a high probability of becoming invalid and bouncing.

Subscriber completes goal - Another unpreventable reason for list fatigue occurs after subscribers make purchases and their needs change. For example, if someone signs up to receive emails from a travel web site on cruises to the Greek Isles, it is likely that they will no longer be interested in receiving information on cruises to Greece when they return from the trip. Some of your subscribers will be interested in booking their next cruise vacation to the Bahamas, some will decide to go skiing, some won’t even think about booking another vacation for years. A few might book another cruise to Greece but will want a 14 day cruise instead of seven or they’ll want to visit ports they didn’t get to see the first time. Regardless, the subscribers’ needs have changed after the initial purchase and it is up to you to figure out what the subscribers want. Some subscribers won’t require anything and will fall off your list. However, you will be able to keep many of these subscribers if you continue to send messages that are relevant to their needs.

Preventable:

Message is not relevant – If you are not targeting and segmenting your list to send specific, relevant messages to your subscribers, you will lose them. Each and every message must capture the attention of your subscribers and provide information that is useful to them. If your messages don’t fulfill a specific need of your subscribers, they will quickly stop listening to you. Listrak has published several white papers on the topic of email relevancy, including “Improving Relevancy of Email Campaigns” and “Creating Relevant Email Campaigns with Dynamic Content.” You may download them from our online resource center to learn more on the topic.

Subscription best practices weren’t followed – Your opt-in process sets the tone for all of your email communications. An opt-in process that is quick and easy, yet captures the right profiling data, produces active subscribers. Confirming your subscribers want to join your lists through a double opt-in process can increase activity by 20 percent or more and greatly extends your retention rate. For more information on subscription best practices, read Listrak’s white paper “Increase ROI with List Management Tactics.”

Email best practices aren’t followed – It should go without saying that you will lose your audience if your emails don’t follow best practices. If your messages aren’t branded properly, contain broken links, have weak subject lines, unappealing content, or ineffective offers buried below the fold, you aren’t giving your subscribers a reason to read the emails.

Frequency isn’t satisfactory – Are you sending emails to your subscribers every day when they expected to hear from you once a month? Are you sending emails every quarter and your subscribers are forgetting that they opted-in to your list? If you aren’t sending your messages at the right time schedule your subscribers will stop paying attention to you. Listrak published a white paper entitled “Email Frequency: How Relevancy Tactics Changed the Rules” which discusses what you can do to determine your optimal frequency schedule.

Email addresses are invalid – While you cannot control the fact that subscribers frequently change their email addresses without updating your preference center with their new contact information or even unsubscribing the old email addresses from your list, you can minimize the risk of mailing to invalid emails through list management best practices such as bounce management, list hygiene, and monitoring complaints. Listrak’s white paper “Increase ROI with List Management Tactics” provides additional information on these items.

The important thing to remember is that even if you fix all of the preventable causes of list fatigue you will still have a number of inactive subscribers on your list. Then, it’s up to you to figure out how long to keep them on your list and when it’s time to remove them.