When a user unsubscribes to a mailing list of any kind, they're often doing so because they aren't interested in that particular email, or they don't fully understand the benefits of your communication (assuming you're actually providing the education and information that they're craving). What we'll describe on this page is the mechanism we use, and our clients use, to return up to 30% of subscribers back onto your list... and you will potentially convert around 7% of all those that unsubscribers into a phone call (usually lower, but we've seen higher).

How is an unsubscription-based subscription possible? When a user unsubscribes from your list you'll normally, or at least hopefully, redirect them to a page on your website. This approach is rather pedestrian and typical, but the point here is that you have them back on your website. Redirecting an unsubscriber back to a specific landing page, based on the list that they were subscribed, provides us with an opportunity to deliver a compelling reason to stay, and to deliver a clear call-to-action. If every page on your website is a type of landing page, and every page needs to be provide a conversion opportunity, this includes unsubscribe pages as well.

First, the unsubscription pages are created like any other landing page with the exception that we normally include just one column (rather than the typical two-column layout that we know converts). It takes no more than a minute for each page since all the page object selections are made with the click of a button.

  Pictured: An example unsubscribe landing page. In this case we reinforce that the only methods of gaining access to our free 1800Funnels product (more powerful that all the paid Facebook programs in the industry) is by being on our mailing list. We provide a short video but rely on the subscription form under each post to facilitate the conversion (we could have easily integrated a form but in this case we're using a very simple approach).

The redirections are applied via the 'Email Marketing' option in our parent 'Marketing' menu. Selecting filtering returns all the redirect options assigned to each list you have created. There is a single option for default redirects (where one doesn't exist for the specific list), and there is a 'Override Redirect' which completely overrides all existing redirects and sends all unsubscribe traffic to the same page. The image below shows the general 'Unsubscribe' panel.

  Pictured: The unsubscribe redirect panel. In the early stages of your marketing it's not uncommon to simply redirect to a single page. As your marketing programs mature you will want to include conversion elements so as to improve upon the conversions as we've described. Test data shown only (the lists are used on our demonstration client website). The landing pages are simply chosen from a select menu.

The feature is a small part of our broader email marketing framework, but it's a powerful feature nonetheless. Keep in mind that various on-page triggers apply as they do anywhere else, such as text messaging (if the systems knows a phone number of a user, and they're still unsubscribing, it may dictate a need for escalated contact). The experience itself is one we consider mandatory for the email-based spill-point of the marketing funnel.