You’ve been diligently building your list for the past year.

Slow + steady.

During that time your content has evolved – and some of your subscribers have been with you since the beginning.

But you’ve been consistent and they’ve stuck with you!

You’ve got 900 some odd people – and you’re ready to start launching your programs, products, or services.

You create a program + then rush to tell your list about your first offering!

After you send one email, you don’t get too many opens or clicks…so you send another and another and another.

4 emails … All in one week.

There are a few more opens…and a few more clicks… but then you start seeing a little fallout.

Are They Just Not That Into You?

So – you lose 1, 5, 20, maybe 50 subscribers in a week. Ouch! Why did that happen?

You’ve been consistently providing value, content, and sending them emails every single week for more than a year now!

What gives??

When people jump off your list, here are a few things that might have happened:

1 – You forgot to tell the neighbors about your upcoming party.

You didn’t warn people you’d be sending a few more emails that week – and believe it or not – doing this will help you during times when you DO increase your email frequency.

Telling people in advance, helps to disarm them – so if they see an email, they won’t start grumbling under their breath about you spamming them … and leave your list – they’ll probably just delete the email if they don’t want to read it.

I wish I were making this up – but not warning your list has caused several people I know to lose subscribers in a huge wave!

2 – You didn’t give people a choice.

Who likes to be told what to do?  Not me!

In fact, if I sense I’m being forced into anything, I’ll say no just on principle.  While you may not be as dramatic as I am, I bet you cringe a little when you get the sense someone ASSUMES you want to do something.

It’s human nature to want to scream – “Hey, you’re not the boss of me!”

Make sure to allow people to raise their hand for your upcoming offering – never assume everyone is interested.

When you allow people to tell you WHAT THEY WANT, it means you respect their time and space and inbox…. and builds TRUST.

So – what to do?

How do we get the most out of our list, make sure the people who are leads stay leads and don’t jump off your list the second you start offering something?

3 Steps To Keeping Your List Happy + NOT hitting the unsubscribe button.

Before we dig into the exact steps you need to take to make sure people don’t jump in droves off your list – understand and face facts.

People unsubscribe!

They do it whenever they feel like it – sometimes for no apparent reason – and sometimes they think they need to tell you why they don’t like you anymore (I really don’t like those people… not nice!).

Get used to it.  It’s hard and I still get bummed out when people unsubscribe.  So you’re not alone.

Ok – that said – here’s how to be respectful of your subscribers – especially when you’ve done all that hard work to get them on your list in the first place.

#1 Train + Educate

Make sure you are really clear in your sign up autoresponder that they will receive promotions from you from time to time but that you won’t be littering their inbox.

#2 Warn

A week or two before your launch or before the frequency of your emails increase, let them know you are going to be sending a few more emails!

#3 Choice

Give them the chance to jump onto an interest list.  Put a link in your normal newsletter or weekly mailing to your list – telling people if they want to know more, click the link and sign up.

I personally prefer this method – because it means that if I DON’T sign up, I won’t be bugged with tons of emails about something I don’t really want.

Two Exceptions to this …

Since your list is growing each day – you don’t want to miss the opportunity to get them on the interest list.

Every now and then throughout or before your launch, you can send an email to your main list – almost like a check-in to say, “Hey, we’re doing some crazy stuff over on this list – want to know more? Oooo I bet you do!”

Why #3 Is The Best Way To Keep Your Subscribers

Allow people to raise their hands – this empowers them and helps them learn to click your offers. I’ve had people I never expected to – raise their hands, join the interest list – and then become clients.

Allow people to make that decision that they want additional communication from you – this makes them feel more in control. People don’t like to be told what to do.

The “you’re not the boss of me” feeling is easy to create if you’re too pushy and don’t give people a chance to make a choice.

On a practical level – you create a clear interest list – where people want to know about that specific, focused topic and offers.

Now you can continue to make very focused offers to this list of people.

Set this up right now

Open up your email service provider–Active Campaign, Convert Kit, Mail Chimp…whatever you use, use their tutorials to set up your forms now.

Now It’s Your Turn

Get your interest list ON! Create your interest list and put a link to it in the comments below! Then, share with your friends so they can put their links in the list below too!

Are you on my interest list for the next round of Fearless Launching?

If not – make sure to jump over there now – Fearless Launching

will rock your socks off even before it starts–don’t want to miss what’s coming up!