You put a lot of work into building up a list in AWeber. And you’re rewarded with a steady stream of interesting traffic and sales to support your efforts. But sometimes, it’s not enough. What if you find yourself in a situation where you have to manage a list that no longer serves your needs?
The most common cause of this is subscriber changes. Whether it’s because your list is outdated, or memberships on your list are coming from different places than usual, there’s a good chance you’ll encounter some type of subscriber churn.
What you need to know is that you don’t need to throw away your entire list. You just need to update the information you have and continue to work with what you have. In this article, we’ll tell you exactly how to do that. So sit back and get ready to change some information about your subscribers.
The Importance of Updating Information
Subscriber changes are, at the end of the day, an inevitable part of any business. Even top-notch companies like HubSpot undergo subscriber churn where around half of their lists either stop responding to their emails or unsubscribe after a while. This is just a fact of life.
Odds are you’ll have to deal with this at some point. Even if you have an A+ rating with the Better Business Bureau, you’re going to have at least a couple of bad apples on your hands. And when that happens, you’re going to have to do some fixing. But instead of simply deleting the bad subscribers and moving on, you’re going to have to learn how to work with what you have. Which is why it’s so important to keep your subscriber details up-to-date.
Why is keeping up with subscriber changes so important? Let’s dive into this a bit. When you work with an email marketing platform like AWeber, you’ll notice that it keeps track of all the information you need about your subscribers. This means that if you ever have to change something about them, you have the option of doing it from the platform. So instead of wasting your time entering this information manually or looking for it across multiple databases, you can simply do it from within the platform. All the while, AWeber is maintaining a complete and accurate record of your subscribers. As a result, you’ll never have to worry about your data being out of date or incorrect. Meaning, fewer headaches and extra hours wasted on simple tasks for you.
What To Look Out For
So you’ve decided to tackle this issue head-on and start updating your subscriber details. Great! But before you do that, it’s important to take a step back and consider what you’re dealing with. There are a few key things you’ll need to keep in mind to make sure you don’t end up in a situation where you have to start from scratch again.
The very first thing you need to do is make sure your list is up-to-date. As we mentioned before, a large portion of businesses go through this at some point. So you can bet that some of your subscribers are going to decide they don’t want to be on your list anymore. And if you don’t have their current email address, you’ll be unable to contact them to let them know about the changes. Which means you’ll either have to scrap the list entirely or send out a notification to everyone saying that you’ve stopped taking new memberships. The last thing you want to do is annoy your existing subscribers with a bunch of unrelated mailings.
The second thing you need to keep in mind is how you’re going to deal with memberships on your list. For example, if you’re accepting memberships through Stripe, you’ll need to set the plans your customers choose to automatically renew their memberships. Otherwise, you’ll end up in a situation where you have to keep asking your members to renew their memberships.
Thirdly, make sure you’re sending out the right emails to the right people. A large portion of businesses go through this as well. So you can bet that some of your subscribers are going to decide they want to stop receiving your emails once they realize you’re not targeting their demographic.
Last but not least, you need to build a solid email marketing strategy. This might mean changing the way you approach customer acquisition or figuring out which of your email lists should you focus on. Knowing how to approach these issues will help you tackle them successfully instead of letting them linger for months or years until you finally give up and start over again.
The Five Stages of Subscriber Changes
For a business that undergoes a lot of change, the process of updating subscriber information can seem complex and overwhelming. But that’s what makes it essential you approach this issue successfully. Because if you don’t, all the work you put in could be for nothing. Which is why we’ve outlined the process of dealing with subscriber changes in detail below.
1. Determine Why The Change Occurs
The first thing you should do after accepting the fact that you’re faced with subscriber changes is to sit back and try to figure out why this is happening. This is easier said than done, but you can use a number of tactics to help you figure it out. Even if you’re experiencing growth, you might encounter a situation where you suddenly have a bunch of unsubscribers or where your list begins to skew slightly younger or older than usual. If you’re experiencing any of these issues, it’s time to take a look at your list and try to determine what’s going on.
Sometimes, a change in leadership at a company can cause subscriber churn. If the individuals in charge decide they want to take a different approach for email marketing or decide to discontinue the service altogether, you’ll have to deal with the changes. Sometimes this can be a tough transition for businesses to make, and it’s important to take the time to do so successfully. Otherwise, you’re opening yourself up to a world of hurt. When this happens, it’s important to take the time to work with your existing subscribers to help them find a new approach to engaging with your content.
2. Identify The Person You’ll Need To Contact
Once you’ve isolated the reason for the change, the next step is to figure out who you’ll need to contact in order to fix it. For some businesses, this might be as simple as reaching out to the CTO or CEO. But if you’re experiencing a bit of a challenge and need some help, it might be a good idea to reach out to your marketing manager or someone on your sales team. They’ll be the best people to help you find the right person to contact in order to get this fixed. Once you’ve found that person, it’s time to move on to the next step.
3. Gather All The Necessary Information
After you’ve found the person you’ll need to contact in order to resolve the subscriber change, it’s time to start gathering all the necessary information. This will be different for each scenario, but you should have a general idea of what to expect. For the sake of this example, let’s say you’ve found that the change is caused by a new CEO who wants to take a different approach for the company. In that case, you’ll need to know what that approach is and whether or not you agree with it. You might also need to know how involved the individual is on a day-to-day basis. This is important because you don’t want to waste time with someone who isn’t going to be able to help you. And it also means you’ll need to adjust your approach accordingly.
4. Create A Plan
Once you’ve gathered all the necessary information, it’s time to put all that into practice. To make sure you don’t go overboard and end up doing too much, it’s important to take your time planning out what you need to do. This involves creating a plan and sticking to it. If you follow this process diligently, you’ll be able to tackle the issue successfully. If you rush, you might end up causing more damage than good.
5. Execute The Plan
The last step in the process is to carry out the plan you’ve created. After you’ve followed all the steps above, it’s time to sit back and wait for results. Depending on how urgent the situation is, this could take some time. But eventually, you’ll start to see results and will be able to give credit to the person who was responsible for getting this fixed.