Couple of years back, I had signed up for GLOBALIZER AFFILIATES! (worst decision I have made). not because of their Ad program, but how hard they make customers to unsubscribe from their Email List.

Here is a copy from there Email

You are receiving this newsletter because you currently hold an active affiliate account with Globalizer.com. If you would no longer like to receive email notifications from us, please write to:
Globalizer.com | 35 Pinelawn Rd., Suite 108W | Melville, NY 11747

Seriously – you expect customers to snail mail to unsubscribe from mailing list?

What Happens Next – I don’t use their account, so I have created a filter to auto delete the emails.

If you have an email list for your business, don’t make it hard for subscribers to unsubscribe.

After reading few blog posts about turning off pop-up lead collection forms, I observed there is high unsubscribe rate from leads collected using popup forms like Aweber Pop Over and plugins like Popup Domination.

Unsubscribe Rate

Without much testing just a casual look at reports shows high unsubscribe rate from popup leads.

After observing the unsubscribe rates over 3 separate time intervals, about 86% of people who unsubscribe, have signed up  using pop-over form.

Lead Subscribe -Un-subscribe Stats

• 80% of leads collected is via pop-over form
• 86% of unsubscribed leads have signed up using pop-up form

I don’t use Double Opt-In for leads. So, 86% of unsubscribe leads include invalid email address. To make more sense, I have to dive down deeper analytics, but I don’t have all the statistics features in my aweber account.

I still use pop-up lead collection forms. 14% of leads + 20% of leads from other sign-up forms have resulted in over 85,000 subscribers. So, I’m continuing to pop up email collection.

Received the following Email update from Aweber Today.

As you may already know, the email marketing service ProFollow is a privately branded version of AWeber. This Wednesday, March 30th, 2011, we will begin to transition all ProFollow accounts, including yours, over to a cobranded version of AWeber.

This will not affect your billing, and the features you will have access to will not change. There will only be three differences for you as a customer:

1 – You will see the AWeber logo along with the ProFollow logo in your account, and log into your account at AWeber.com.

2 – You will be able to make use of AWeber’s support directly – we have an extensive knowledge base and a series of webinars, all of which will be available to you as AWeber customers, in addition to the support you have already been receiving from our Solutions Team via email, chat, and phone.

3 – Over the next few months, you may need to replace some of the ProFollow features that you have installed on your website, such as web forms. You will have ample warning to make this change in time, and further instructions on what you need to do will be sent out as we begin this transition.

If you are into email marketing, testing is the key. There are various things to  tested to improve Email Open Rates. Link click through rates is completely different area.

1. Send Email once a week ( on high traffic days)
2. Send Email once number of articles reaches certain number  ( RSS to Email)
3. Generic Email Subject ( What’s New, Free New Articles, 3 Free New Articles, …)
4. Email for every new article ( Once per day)
5. Email Subject to be Article  Title
6. Use Readers name in Email Subject
7. Include Call to Action Words ( Final Call, Open Now, One Day Sale Only, …)
8. Use small caps instead of  Capital letters.
9. Use Symbols to emphasis an idea ( [Download], (Click Now), …)
10. Short email subject line ( sometimes lengty ones work too)

Take one idea, test it for a week and run through all possible combination’s. After you find the subject that works, work to improvise on that.

Example – If sending emails on Mondays mornings has higher open rates, then try other combination’s on Monday.