Gmail Is Asking Your to Customers to Divorce You
Your Email List is gold to your business. It represents relationships you’ve earned with people who are interested in your products and services. Each contact on your list made a connection with your brand and asked to stay connected to you and receive communications from your company.
Did you know Gmail is reaching out and asking people on your list if they’d like to sever their email relationship with you? That’s right. Gmail is serving up suggestions to their email users for brands they have a connection with and asking: would you like to unsubscribe? Have a look:
Not only are they making the suggestion to unsubscribe, but the option is bolded, in pretty shades of blue, and followed by a dreary gray option to stay on your list. They’re making it easy for your customers to divorce you. And you won’t even see the breakup in your metrics because the person didn’t unsubscribe in response to anything you sent them. The opt out went directly to Google.
It’s as if your mailman delivered a divorce contract to your spouse and you knew nothing about it.
How rude, right?
I do love Gmail. I personally have a lot of Gmail accounts, and I think they do a lot of great things. However, I’m not a fan of the behind-your-back breakup request that’s happening.
Even though I don’t like it, I understand it. They’re a business first and foremost, and for Gmail this is a business move. Gmail is trying to prepare for the holiday season to deliver only the emails people want most. So, if they notice you’ve been emailing someone and they haven’t opened, they’re going to ask that person: do you really still want to be in this relationship?
Sigh.
So, what do business owners who’ve worked hard for these email relationships do? Work harder at your relationship. Work smarter. Show your contacts you really love them and understand them. You should be doing it anyway. Put some serious effort in now before they leave you for the holidays.
Segment your list. Separate out your Gmail contacts so that you can see what’s happening with that audience.
Follow closely what they are responding to, personalize content, and send more of what the contacts respond to.
Talk to your contacts before Gmail approaches them. The breakup request appears after a contact has not opened your email for 30 days or more:
Pay attention to who has not opened in two weeks or three. Send them something enticing to open before the 30-day mark. Create a re-engagement strategy for your Gmail users specifically.
Remind users the value of receiving emails from you and all the good benefits of being on your list. Make them excited about the holiday season ahead and what you’ll be sharing.
A good email relationship is not so different from any other relationship: you need to communicate. In real life, we advocate listening and watching body language; in the email world, that means looking at what people open and click. Show you understand what they are interested in and speak to that. Build your relationship. Show you care. With that investment in your relationship, hopefully Gmail will never see your contacts reach the 30 day non-opener mark to raise the suggestion of divorce. And if they do, trust you’ve still built a bond where contacts will click the dreary gray option and stay vested in the relationship.