This month’s theme is List-Building and this week, it’s all about CHALLENGES!

(Yep, I did one of those too because, remember, I am a serial builder-lister person.)

You DO need to invest a lot of time and energy and be available throughout the challenge, but if done right, it’s a very effective list-builder because you can attract those outside your current audience or tribe, it’s easy to share and take part in them, and you can share you unique brilliance.

In my case, I got to geek out on systems for 5 DAYS STRAIGHT! Oh the sheer joy 😀

As with most campaigns and launches, there are a lot of moving parts. But I break it down for you and show you what it looked like behind the scenes and how I set up the campaign in Infusionsoft PLUS how you can repurpose the information once the challenge is over.

This is Lisa Wells and welcome to Systems Sunday. We are wrapping up our theme for the month, which was list-building, and today’s lesson is how to keep your list happy by making it easy for your subscribers to manage their email communication using an email preferences center.

Why do you need an email prefs center?

First, it provides an easy way for your subscribers to manage their email (what they get and how often they get it). It also cuts down on the unsubscribe rate. The industry average is about 1%. So if you have a list of 1,000 people, every time you send a broadcast, on average, about 10 people will unsubscribe. I don’t know about you, but I take unsubscribes and opt-outs kind of personally, so I try to make it easy for my list to unsubscribe and make choices about what they want from me.

You can do this with time-based, meaning, this type of preference center gives your subscribers the option to receive email less often, maybe on a specific cadence, or a chance to take a set break from receiving email for a set amount of time.

There is also content-based, this is what I do. A content-based preference center lets them pick the types of communication that they do or do not want you to send them.

And then there’s campaign-based and I’m going to show you an example of that.

Now, the reason why people opt-out, “Too many emails” is usually #1 or #2 on the list year after year. So having a time-based preference, lets them choose how often, where someone can choose to receive less or more emails, is great. So if you send a weekly newsletter, they can instead opt for a monthly digest. This is something you can survey your list and just ask. When I surveyed my people years ago, I had a monthly newsletter and asked if they wanted to keep getting it monthly or would they rather get it twice monthly, I have about 50/50. That didn’t help me make any business decisions, but if you see a clear trend or an overwhelming majority who wanted something from you, it may be something to think about.

Having a content-based preferences center lets your subscribers choose the how – what they get from you – and is great for those who segment their list.

And then we have campaign-based. Remember that stat I showed you earlier, where the average opt-out rate for an email was 1%? Well, during a launch when people are sending LOTS of emails, the unsubscribe percentage could go up to around 3%. Again, if you have 1,000 on your list, you might lose 30 people for each “sales” email you send. What I like to do is add a way to opt-out of the campaign.

Having a campaign-based opt-out mitigates the jump in opt-outs during a launch or sales campaign. Let me show you what I have…

[Demo]

Here is an invitation sequence, so during a launch, you are getting an email every couple of days or so throughout the launch or the sales period. What I like to do is at the bottom of the email, I like to add, “I only do this … once in a while, if you’d rather not get these, click here” and then I have a way for them to opt-out of that one campaign but not out of my main list.

Let me show you the back end of the email preferences center. Here’s a typical broadcast email and usually all of the emails will have at the very bottom “I only want to send you what you’re interested in, update your settings in my email preferences center.” When they click on this link, it goes to a page in my Infusionsoft where they can adjust their settings and segment themselves.

In the back-end, in Infusionsoft, here’s the landing page, once they click on it, the decision diamonds act to tag them. And it tags them “yes” or “no.” Now when I send something out, I just select based on those tags.

Catch up on previous List-Building Systems episodes + resources mentioned in the video:

• [Video] How to Build Your List Using Quizzes
• [Video] My Most Popular and Effective Lead Magnet
• [Video] How to Build Your List with a Giveaway
• [Video] Keep Your List Happy by Using an Email Preferences Center
• Infusionsoft is what I use to build campaigns and automate my marketing. I am an Infusionsoft Certified Partner so reach out to me if you want to talk about Infusionsoft pricing and benefits.
• During the video, I refer to my quiz campaign, you can view that video here.

Did you enjoy this episode and want to put it into action? Grab this kit!