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The Real Culprit Behind Unsubscribes – Inbox Clutter isn’t the Problem

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Apr 24 2009

MarketingSherpa recently posted an article presenting research they've gathered on what drives people to unsubscribe from email communications.  Year after year, their email benchmark survey states that the top reason was identified as 'Inbox clutter' and its effect on all email communications.  'Delivering on the promise of relevance' comes in a distant second. 

The findings in this article were based upon feedback at the MarketingSherpa's email summit in Miami where people at that conference painted a different picture.  The top two answers both speak to the important of the individual relationship between emailer and recipient.   They identify relevance and campaign-level frequency as the top reasons for opting-out or simply ignoring a sender's email. 

In reflecting upon this finding, I would have to agree. 

I find myself immediately opening emails from one company which provides me with development advice, alerts or product ideas for my newborn.  This particular site has served up surveys to me several times to get more information and it is very apparent that they use this information to craft a relevant communications for me and my 5 month old.  On the flip side, I find myself immediately deleting emails received from a discount retailer because they send me (at least) three promotional emails a week for items that I don't have any interest in buying.  I seem to be on a "global" email list and tagged to get every email they decide to send out.  I guess I'll continue to delete these emails until the retailer can find out more about me and treat me differently from the 'Average Joe'.

 

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