Eighteen years ago, when I was just starting out, I had asked one of our senior email marketers to review an email that I had designed. He noticed that I had buried the unsubscribe link deep in the email footer and made the link color really hard to see. He asked me why I was purposely making it hard for contacts to unsubscribe.

I said, "I don't want people to unsubscribe! That's not a good thing when they unsubscribe."

He replied, "Stop believing that lie. You WANT to make it easy for people to unsubscribe. It actually helps our email sending reputation!"

His response was so counterintutive that it grabbed my attention by both ears.

Many marketers believe that mailbox providers penalize senders for high unsubscribe rates. Not true. Mailbox providers like Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, etc. will penalize you for spam complaints – but not for unsubscribes. In addition, mailbox providers penalize you when you send a lot of emails that no one reads.

By making it easy for contacts to unsubscribe, you are actively reducing the risk of spam complaints and inactive subscribers, which can ultimately improve your email deliverability.

Mailbox providers consider various email engagement actions like moving an email to a saved folder, clicking on the links in the email, forwarding the email, etc. They don’t track whether a link in your email is to a product landing page or to an unsubscribe page.

Another lie is that if you make it easy for your contacts to unsubscribe, they’ll do so in large numbers. The root of that lie is an insecurity in one’s own emails. If you believe your emails are valuable, then a prominently placed unsubscribe link won’t matter.

An unsubscribe link is for people who don’t want your emails; it’s not for people who do. So, if you’re worried about unintentionally prompting people to unsubscribe then you need to take a step back and ask yourself, why are you asking them to subscribe in the first place?

The most damaging response to your emails is for someone to issue a spam complaint. Mailbox providers have a very low tolerance for spam complaints: less than one complaint for every 1000 emails you send.

So, if a recipient doesn’t want your email, then let them unsubscribe. Don’t force them to issue a spam complaint just to stop receiving your emails.

While unsubscribe rates (via the STOP keyword) are damaging to a mobile marketer using SMS, unsubscribe rates are not for the email marketer.

In reality, unsubscribes are helpful for your email reputation. You want to sending your emails to those who want them. Why waste your time and money sending to those who don’t?

Get out a pencil and paper and I’ll do the math together with you. Sending your emails to people who don’t want them means that these emails never get opened and never get clicked. So, the only ones clicking in your emails are those that want your emails.

Let’s say that you regularly send 100,000 emails in any given email campaign. And out of that, 20,000 people regularly read and click in your emails. Just to keep the arithmetic simple, let’s say all 100,000 of your emails are making it to everyone’s inboxes (I wish!!).

So that gives you a 20% click rate. That’s within industry average.

Somewhere in the remaining 80,000 email recipients who don’t click are those who ignore your emails because they don’t care about them. Let’s say 10% of the non-clickers include those who don’t care for your emails. That’s 8,000 recipients.

Let’s say you stop wasting your time and money sending to those 8,000 recipients. That means you’re now sending to 92,000 recipients, which includes those 20,000 people who regularly read and click in your emails.

What does the arithmetic tell you? Your click rate just jumped from 20% to 21.7%. “Who cares about a 1.7% increase,” you ask. Mailbox providers do. By increasing the click rate of your emails, the mailbox providers’ email engagement AI determines that people like your emails and are more likely to accept them and route them to the inboxes.

Now that I've debunked the common lies surrounding unsubscribes, here’s some best practices for enabling email unsubscribes and boosting your email reputation:

So, it's time to stop believing the lie that unsubscribes damage your brand. Implement these best practices, and you can create a positive email experience for your subscribers and enhance your email reputation. Remember, unsubscribes are not something to fear but rather an opportunity to refine your email list and build stronger relationships with your engaged audience.