It’s not you. It’s your content strategy. That’s the message from ExactTarget, an Internet marketing company.
They did a study of why we unlike, unfollow and unsubscribe from e-mail, Facebook and Twitter marketing. It’s a pretty interesting look at why we object to the messages we ask to receive and stop reading them. Here’s what’s happening:
- Many people break it off because they only wanted to enter a contest or get a free promotion. After that, they really aren’t interested what the company is sending to them.
- People want content they find useful not marketing messages.
- They don’t mind getting a lot of messages so much if the content is useful and relevant. They say they get too much from a company when the content isn’t what they’re interested in reading.
- And here is where you pay for the sins of everyone else. If people feel like they’re getting too many messages in general, your relationship is in danger. The way to protect it is to make sure your content is relevant to what they want.
Basically, you’re going to keep people interested in your e-mails, tweets and updates as long as you give them content that they find valuable. And telling them that in advance is the best way to build lists instead of giving them freebies or contest entries.
It’s interesting to note that in order to get a copy of this study, you need to give ExactTarget your e-mail address. They will send you a link. And put you on their e-mail list.
