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It’s happened to most all of us. We see some site that has great deals on products or services, and we sign up for an email list. But then, after receiving an email a month/week/day/hour, it gets to be too much noise and we hit that all-too-familiar “unsubscribe” link in the footer of the email.

Being a lady who loves clothes, makeup, general online shopping … and GOOD DEALS, I find myself signing up for these things all the time (hang in there, boys, we’re getting to the techie/strategy stuff momentarily). In fact, there are so many ladies like me out there, that designer discount collective sites have started popping up everywhere. They package themselves as “invite-only” and spread by incentivized referrals and word of mouth. Sites like ShopItToMe.com, GiltGroupe.com are some examples. I get … well, I GOT emails from both of these sites, and a few others, at least once a week, if not more up until a few months back when I found out that I’m going to have a baby, realized that a waistline and online clothes shopping would likely be distant memories for at least 9 months, and started hitting those unsubscribe buttons.

It was when I encountered the ShopItToMe.com unsubscribe page that I saw something that made me NOT unsubscribe … and instead, take note for my strategy clients. Too many times, when we are dealing with customers on and offline, we give them options in black and white – yes or no. Either you want this, or you don’t want it. If you don’t want it, you’re no longer a prospective customer … if you do want it, you’re in. When it comes to email lists, which are becoming more and more specialized, we have the ability to give our clients more options. It’s about time that we actually started doing this.

ShopItToMe.com has the right idea. I clicked on that “unsubscribe” button and was presented with a few options for altering my email subscription in addition to just plain unsubscribing. The ShopItToMe.com email gurus examined every possible reason why I might be seeking to unsubscribe from their email list and presented alternatives for me to customize my subscription accordingly. It was not black or white / yes or no … not even shades of gray. I had a regular color wheel of options to choose from to customize my email subscription to fit changes in my lifestyle or email reading habits.

Their options included:
Take a Temporary Break – “We know you’re busy. Take a breather! We won’t come back ’til you tell us to.” Then, you choose a date in the future when your subscription will re-activate.

Make SaleMail More Affordable – “Set a maximum price. How about $100?” Then, you choose a maximum price point for the items that show up in your email. This allows you to customize the products being shown to you to more realistically fit your budget.

Receive Email Less Often – “How does one Salemail a week sound?” You choose how often you’d like to receive the newsletter. It’s as simple as that.

If none of these options satisfied me, and I still wished to unsubscribe, they said they’d miss me and asked for me to share with them why I was unsubscribing (at my option, of course).

Being that I was unsubscribing because I wouldn’t have a waistline for the next 9 months, I selected an option to simply suspend my subscription for 9 months instead of unsubscribing altogether. I came away with an appreciation for how consumer-focused ShopItToMe.com was, and how they presented me with an option for relating to me on my terms in away that suits where I am in my personal circumstances.

Consumer-focused organizations should take note. Customers may have a variety of different reasons why they may cease engaging with your products and services. When forming a strategy for leveraging the internet to better relate to your customers, take advantage of the many different options for customizing electronic communications. Pay attention to your opt-out rates and Twitter un-follows. Use your observations to examine what might be causing your customers to lose interest and examine ways to improve upon the way that you relate to your customers where they are in their life circumstances. Think of beefing up your e-communication options as comparable providing a customer service team with additional training. It could ultimately lead to higher customer satisfaction and retention. And we all know that happy and plentiful customers make for a positive bottom line.