Bye Bye, You’re a Bore! Gain E-mail and Newsletter Subscriber Trust from the Beginning, or Lose Them Forever

"Inactive" subscribers are poison to your e-mail program. These are the people who opt-in for your e-mail and then never open, click or respond to your newsletter, promotions or other marketing messages. They are more inaccessible to you than prospects you haven’t even met yet. You can always reach a new prospect, but once someone is on your list and ignoring you, they are beyond your touch.

Why does this happen to even the most carefully built permission-based lists? Because unsubscribing is more of a hassle to most customers than we think. Don’t be fooled by low unsubscribe rates. It’s easier to delete unread e-mails or hit your service provider’s "this is spam" button than to unsubscribe. The bottom line: Your unsubscribe rate is a poor metric of subscriber interest and the relevancy of your e-mail program. If you want to improve customer response and interactivity, you need to pay attention to your inactive rate instead. If your list of inactive subscribers is high, you need to improve your engagement strategy.

By Stephanie Miller

Full Story: http://www.cmomagazine.com/read/020105/you_are_a_bore.html