Over the past 5+ years of daily emailing, I’ve trained myself to shrug as my default reaction when people unsubscribe from my list.
Most of the time, people who unsub have never bought anything from me, weren’t a good fit for what I sell in the first place, weren’t even reading my daily emails very often.
If those kinds of subscribers go, that’s ok. The world is packed full of people, and my email list is not the right fit for most of them.
But!
It sometimes happens that the people who unsubscribe from my list have bought stuff from me, did read my emails, even seemed to be fans.
Sometimes, these unsubscribes are the result of a fermentation process — people move on, their circumstances change, or perhaps they just get sick and tired of me.
Other times though… take for example what happened yesterday.
I got a message from a reader who had bought my Copy Riddles program, my Most Valuable Email program, and my Horror Advertorial Swipe File. A reader who had replied often to my emails. A reader who had given me glowing testimonials for a few of my offers.
And yet…
ActiveCampaign has this reader marked as having unsubbed 8 days ago. Last night, this same reader wrote me to say:
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John, I’m somehow kicked off your list again. Hah! I have no idea how this keeps happening. This is the last email I got from you.
I signed back up via your opt-in form just now, but thought I’d let you know in case this is happening with other subs.
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Normally, this would be an opportunity to say something like, “and that’s what happens when you write emails every day… it becomes like appointment TV and people seek you out if you don’t show up on time. This is why you should buy my courses on writing daily emails blah blah…”
Actually, that’s exactly what I did write the first time the reader above wrote me to say he got kicked off my list, a couple years ago.
But now, I’m actually a little anxious to root out this phantom unsubscribe problem once and for all.
Because the reader above is not the only one who has told me he was unsubbed from my list for no good reason.
I have a few real-life friends who are also subscribed to get my emails.
A couple of them have also told me they stopped getting my emails at various points. I checked, and ActiveCampaign says they unsubscribed. My friends deny it. I trust them over ActiveCampaign.
And I figure that if I already know of a handful of cases where people got unsubbed from my list without willing it, there might be more cases where it happened and I don’t know about it.
So I’m appealing to you for any help or advice you can give me.
Again, I use ActiveCampaign. That seems to be the only technical thing I can point to.
Have you had something similar happen to you? Or to one of your clients? Or do you have any advice for me on how I could start debugging this “unwilling unsub” feature?
Write in and tell me what comes to mind. I’ll be grateful for any advice or pointers. Thanks in advance.