More Unsubscribes

I’ve talked before about how you want a regular flow of unsubscribes to your email list.  This is what we see from organizations with growing email fundraising revenue.

So I was thrilled to find out that there’s a name for this phenomenon: The newsletter paradox.

Here’s the paradox:

• When you offer your e-newsletter (or any email signup, really) people will join.  Your list grows.
• As soon as you send something to your list, you get unsubscribes and your list shrinks a little.

Put even more simply: your list grows when you do nothing; your list shrinks when you send things.

The result is what’s called a “sawtooth growth pattern” that looks like this:

This happens because when you send a fundraising email, some people on the list will look at it and think, “Oh, I don’t want to get these any longer” or “You know, I don’t care about this anymore.”  And so they unsubscribe.

These unsubscribes often cause people to panic.  However, they are a natural part of list building.

And if you only build your list but never ask anything of it, then you’re maximizing the wrong outcome: you’re optimizing “list size” instead of “money raised.”

The lesson here is that unsubscribes when you send out an e-appeal are natural.