Preference Center Strategy: 5 Ways to Give Email Subscribers a Choice

Email marketers know one of the best ways to keep subscribers happy is to let them choose what emails they receive. That’s why marketers implement preference centers. Sometimes giving your email audience that choice can be the difference between an engaged subscriber and an opt-out.

When it comes to preference centers, email marketers also have a choice. After all, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to implementing a preference center. Audiences, brands, and email programs are all different, which means marketers must choose a preference center strategy that makes sense.

Whether with email content or sending frequency, allowing subscribers to make choices ensures that your emails are relevant. Here are a few choices email marketers have for giving their subscribers choice ways to make a choice.

Let Subscribers Choose How Often They Receive Email

Email marketers often struggle with how often to send email. Once a month? Once a week? Daily? It’s an important decision. Send too much email, and you risk fatiguing your audience. Send too little email, and you lose out on potential revenue. Instead of fretting over frequency, let subscribers set their own email cadence!

Give them a few options for how often they receive email. That way, readers are less likely to unsubscribe because you’re sending them more than they can handle. Plus, if a subscriber does attempt to unsubscribe, having an option to receive fewer emails may keep them on your list. Every subscriber is different. Whatever your subscribers prefer, get on their frequency.

Meet Subscribers When It’s Convenient for Them

Here’s another common discussion among email marketers: “What’s the best time to send an email?” Like any other aspect of your email program, this answer varies based on your audience. You could A/B test send times, but in the meantime, why not let subscribers decide when to receive your email?

For publishers, this could mean offering different versions of your news digests at different times of the day. News publishers like Politico and Axios offer morning newsletters, as well as shorter afternoon newsletters that recap the day’s events so far. People prefer to read emails at different times of the day, and offering different time options ensures the information is current, no matter when a subscriber is free to check email.

Give Subscribers the Option to Avoid Seasonal Email Blasts

You know the stats: consumers prefer email for brand communication over every other channel. In fact, 61% of consumers prefer email offers to those by any other digital method. That’s good news for email marketers, but unfortunately for consumers, some marketers take it as a cue to blast buyers with a blizzard of email offers during the holidays.

Some people love those sweet deals, but some people don’t. You don’t want to make subscribers mad—not during the holidays! If you plan on ramping up email sends to capitalize on Christmas shoppers, why not give them a choice to opt out before things get too crazy. By letting subscribers choose whether to get onboard, you reduce the risk of freezing out your less email-happy subscribers.

Offer Multiple Newsletters on Different Subjects

The more emails you send a subscriber, the more chances you have to engage them, bring them to your site, and monetize them. Still, you can’t just send email to send it. You have to make sure the content you send is relevant to the subscriber. How do you do that? One way is to separate your email sends into verticals or topics, then allow subscribers to select which newsletters they receive.

Sounds nice, but what if you don’t have the manpower to increase newsletter output? Email automation makes it easy to populate emails with relevant content and scale your email program. When subscribers can opt-in to content they choose, they’re self-personalizing their email, so you ensure they’re receiving email about things they like. That means more engagement and more revenue. In fact, not only do these emails drive site traffic, they also attract in-email advertisers who want their ads in front of interested audiences. It’s a win-win.

Let Email Subscribers Take a Break

Finally, you might be able to reduce opt-outs in your email program if your preference center strategy includes an easy way to turn off email communication for a set period of time. After the temporary break, they return to your regular email sends.

Why would people want a break from your email? Maybe they’re not in the market for your product right now. Maybe you just caught them on a bad day. At any rate, it can help you hold onto a valuable subscriber who might fall in love with your email again after a quick break. If only it was that easy to get a break from all email for a while.

Are you using preference centers in your email program? If not, maybe it’s time to make that choice. UnsubCentral can help.

About UnsubCentral

UnsubCentral offers the industry’s leading solution for email compliance and opt-out list management. UnsubCentral provides advertisers, agencies, and networks with the necessary tools to comply with the CAN-SPAM Act by allowing them to securely manage opt-out and customer lists across third party partners.