The Secret to Less Unsubscribing and More Engagement

The Secret to Less Unsubscribing and More Engagement:rom Business 2 Community by Crystal Gouldey

Every day, we strive to provide both an email marketing service and content that can help small business owners thrive. Part of what we do involves connecting with others who also help small businesses and finding out what our subscribers and customers can learn from them.
Tamara Campbell of Xplore Communications happens to be an AWeber customer AND someone who helps small businesses. Xplore helps cities and towns promote themselves and bring traffic to the small businesses in that town. One community benefiting from their services is the Hoboken-Jersey City area. Their marketing campaign is called “HudsonPulse.”
Hudson Pulse consistently sees good open rates and months can go by before someone clicks that unsubscribe link. So what’s the deal? Consistency. Tamara makes sure everything about this email campaign is consistent. We took a look at how she does it and what small business marketing strategies she’s learned.

Put a Web Form on Every Page

If your website has multiple pages, you don’t want visitors to be scrambling to find where you had that sign up form. Set up a side bar and include your form in that, and have that bar appear on every single page.
Check it out on the HudsonPulse site:

Not only is it a convenience, it makes for a clean, organized design.

Send on a Schedule

“Traffic spikes for HudsonPulse.com on Tuesdays when the email goes out.”
Decide when you want to send your emails and how often. Mondays? Fridays? Both? The schedule is really up to you, but once you pick it, stick with it.
HudsonPulse sends weekly emails every Tuesday around 2 p.m. Subscribers know this right away, as it’s on the web form, and they get no more, no less.
“HudsonPulse was initially a print publication. When we decided to go online we knew we need to keep a consistent communication effort for people to know what is going on in their neighborhood – so we started HudsonPulse weekly emails,” says Tamara.

Keep Subject Lines Familiar

Consistency can also work with subject lines. Including the same thing at the beginning of each subject line (like your company name) makes your emails easily recognizable in the inbox.
HudsonPulse handles this by following a formula: the city names followed by the dates being covered: