In this edition:

→ The psychology of unsubscribing

→ Email marketing when you're a team of one: How to do less, better  (scroll to blogs)

→ Was I too harsh?! (scroll to videos)

→ Email fatigue: What is it? What it's not & what to do  (scroll to end)

Howdy 🤠

I'm back from my holibobs, and I feel like a different person.

I took a week off, headed to Wales for one of my best friends' weddings, ate everything in sight, slept like I hadn't in months, and switched off for the first time in a long time.

Now I'm back at my desk, inbox full, head clear, and trying to figure out what's next for me and the business - which is both exciting and terrifying.

Hope you're all doing well, and life is good. Anyway, let's get into it👇

The Psychology of Unsubscribing

What it really tells you about your relationship with subscribers

In a study I did last year, 97% of people don't unsubscribe if they don't want your emails; they will just ignore you.

When someone unsubscribes you think:

"Was it the subject line? The content or timing? Should we have sent this to them at all?"

But most of the time, it has almost nothing to do with you

Here's what you need to know:

1. The majority of disengaged subscribers never leave. They delete, stop opening and damage your deliverability without ever clicking unsubscribe.

The people who do unsubscribe are giving you a gift 

2. By the time someone unsubscribes, the decision was made weeks or months earlier. The accumulation of irrelevance, no interest, overwhelm,  misaligned expectations, and inbox friction built up long before that final email arrived.

Analysing the email that caused the unsubscribe is almost always the wrong question

3. Your unsubscribe rate is being shaped by other people's emails

Inbox saturation like Black Friday, Mother's Day, and January, drives mass unsubscribes that have nothing to do with your content. You happened to land at the wrong moment.

4. "Too many emails" is rarely about your frequency.
It's about perceived value vs frequency. If every email earns its place, subscribers will tolerate a high cadence. The moment the value drops below the send rate, the inbox math tips.

The full piece covers the tolerance model, predictive coding, how to diagnose a spike, and a practical response framework for all of it.

From the Vault

A blog a day keeps the spam filter away 

⌚ 12 min read:

→  Email Marketing When You're a Team of One: How to Do Less, Better

⌚ 11 min read:

→ The Science of Sending the Right Email at the Right Time

⌚ 5 min read:

→ List Churn Is Normal - Here's How to Measure It, Manage It, and Stop Panicking About It

How inbox behaviour changes by generation

And what it means for your email strategy

I have NEVER spoken about this online before. 

Your audience isn't one type of person. A 58-year-old decision-maker and a 24-year-old marketer use their inbox very differently and your email strategy should reflect that.

From the Queen’s Court

Voiceover video verdicts 

The importance of targeting your SaaS emails

I think I may have been to ruthless with this verdict

The Inbox Drop

Email fatigue: What is it? What it's not & what to do

"The audience is fatigued" - yeah it might be tbf.

Email fatigue is a specific condition with specific causes and specific fixes

What email fatigue actually is

Fatigue happens when the accumulated cost of receiving your emails consistently exceeds the perceived value or interest of or too them. That's it.

It is not about frequency.

You can fatigue an audience with one email a month if it's irrelevant.

You can send daily without fatiguing anyone if every send earns its place.

Fatigue is about the ratio of value to cost

What gets mislabelled as fatigue (and why it matters)
Before you diagnose fatigue, rule these out first:

→ Deliverability decline - if engagement drops suddenly and broadly, check inbox placement before anything else. Your emails might not be reaching the inbox. 

→ List composition problems - if a chunk of your list came from consequential opt-ins (a discount, a download, a checkout tick box), low engagement is expected. They were never fully in the email relationship.

→ Seasonal disengagement - people get busy. A subscriber who goes quiet for 8 weeks during a frantic work period isn't fatigued - they're human.

→ Normal inbox behaviour - People sign up with genuine intent, and then life gets in the way. A subscriber who opens 30% of your emails is not disengaged. They are a normal person with a full inbox. Stop diagnosing individuals. 

→ Content staleness - if your emails are predictable, the brain pattern-codes you as skippable. That's a relevance problem, not a fatigue one.

When it really is email fatigue

If you've ruled all of the above out, fatigue usually comes from one of these:

→ Frequency increasing without value increasing to match

→ Multiple teams or automations all hitting the same subscriber with no awareness of each other

→ The promotional spiral - training your audience to only open for a discount, then wondering why nothing else works

→ Expectation erosion - the relationship has been taking more than it's been giving for too long

I've written a full guide on how to spot it in your data, how to re-establish value and what to do if you have it.  

Quick win for you

Run TFDS on your next email before you send it

I ran a in person workshop a couple of weeks ago and took them through the TFDS exercise when we were mapping their email flows.

They said:

"I really enjoyed taking a different approach to how we map out journeys, and coming up with new flow ideas based on the 'thinking, feeling, doing, saying' framework was incredible" 

Pick your next campaign or journey email. Before you write a single word, answer these four questions about the person receiving it:

→ Think - what's actually going through their head right now?
→ Feel - what emotions will be present when you talk about [challenge, need, problem]?
→ Do - what are they doing in the real world? 
→ Say - what are they saying to themselves or others when they see this or do something?

You can find the full framework with examples here →

Plug of the week 

Training and workshops (2 places left for May - April fully booked)

I run workshops and training sessions on email strategy, deliverability, design, copy, and more - for individuals and teams, in person or online.

Wishing you lots of clicks and zero spam reports! 

Until next time - stay groovy, 

Beth ✌️

I have ADHD (IFYKYK) so please excuse any typos and spelling errors in this email.

What did you think about this email?

Know someone who needs this in their inbox? Send them here.