Stop torturing your audience: 4 page changes that prevented 22,000 unsubscribes.

Everyone’s had a bad experience trying to change email preferences. That nightmare subscription page so blindingly frustrating that you slam “unsubscribe from all” just to be done.

Hidden buttons. Guilt tripping. Unclear options.

But how sure are you that you’re not inflicting that nightmare on your audience?

When today’s experts were tasked with investigating HubSpot’s growing unsubscribe rate, they found an unlikely culprit: Our email preferences page sucked.

The changes they made to that one page salvaged an estimated 22,000 subscribers in just one month.

And, not to be cliche, but… you’re probably making the same mistakes we did.

Sinking Like a Sub

If your unsubscribe rate were growing, most marketers would assume there was a problem with the content. But what if all of your other metrics said otherwise?

“For the last five years or so, our open rate had been increasing. We reached the highest click-through rate in company history. People were opening our emails. They were clicking. But then they were unsubscribing,” says Marcio Veiga.

Marcio’s a senior marketer on our MarTech team and, together with web strategy designer Ciarán Murphy, they were tasked with figuring out this apparent contradiction.

What they discovered was that a user-unfriendly preference page was frustrating readers who might otherwise have simply adjusted their preferences.

“You wouldn’t see your subscriptions grouped in any way,” Marcio explains. “They were just in a huge, unstructured list that could run up to 35 subscriptions.”

“The cognitive load on that page was so overwhelming that the natural response for a user was to reach for the nuclear option. Unsubscribe from all,” adds Ciarán.

The page was originally a band-aid solution to meeting GDPR regulations, with plans to make a better one later. And then a thousand other things took priority. And 10 years passed by.

But by the time Marcio and Ciarán got through with it, the result was a stunning 34% reduction in the unsubscribe rate.

Preferential Treatment

While the individual details might look different for your website, the overarching steps that Marcio and Ciarán took can teach a lot.

1. Simplify the process.

Some folks think that adding friction to the unsubscribe process will make users less likely to leave. (Lookin’ at you, gym membership I signed up for on a surge of New Year’s optimism.)

What it actually does is push users toward drastic actions like adding you to their spam filter.

Your job here is to reduce the cognitive load and help users accomplish a less rash action.

Marcio and Ciarán first took the unstructured list of 35 subscriptions and broke it down by category and logical flow. Then they added a tag system that let users filter by communication type.

“From a design [perspective], it was about giving users a way to filter through them quickly,” Ciarán explains.

2. Strip away distractions.

“This is a trust moment, not a conversion funnel,” Marcio warns. “We want to give them a clean experience for one task: Managing preferences.”

To that end, they removed all CTAs, social media links, marketing language, and even most header and footer navigation. One goal. No exits.

When someone visits your preferences page (as opposed to just hitting “unsubscribe”), it’s probably because their inbox is feeling cramped. They’re not looking to break up with you; they just want a little room to breathe.

But you can very quickly turn a manageable trim into a full opt-out. Make it easy for them to do what they came for and leave ’em with a good impression.

3. Be strategic with placement.

Remember that your goal is to help them make changes. So don’t put “unsubscribe from all” as the first option.

“From a psychology standpoint, making it the first thing they see would draw users toward doing that, instead of pausing to consider whether they actually just want to manage their subscriptions.”

But they’re quick to emphasize that this isn’t about hiding the option to leave. The “unsubscribe from all” button should still be clearly visible.

Marcio and Ciarán recommend offering two separate links in your emails: “unsubscribe” and “manage preferences.” If a visitor arrives by clicking “unsubscribe,” that should be the first option they get. But if someone simply clicked “manage preferences,” then offer the less drastic options first.

4. Offer a way back in.

This may sound counterintuitive to everything we just said, but once someone unsubscribes, you should offer a clear path to re-subscription.

“We have a separate flow where we tell users who submit a form while unsubscribed that they won’t receive what they requested [due to email preferences],” Marcio says. This flow then prompts them to update their preferences again. “With this, we’ve managed to save about 6% of users who go back and resubscribe.”

Managing Your Preferences Page

Okay, lightning round. I asked both fellas for their best advice to marketers who want to optimize their email preferences pages.

DO use ethical friction.

If you’ve ever been asked, “Are you SURE you want to delete that?” you’ve encountered ethical friction.

It’s about giving a slight speedbump that allows users a brief moment to think about what they’re about to do.

“The idea is about making it very clear to the user what’s going to happen when they click that unsubscribe button. Give them a clear picture of what the next steps are and give them a moment to reconsider.”

DO give them a place to vent.

If someone is going through the trouble of unsubscribing, rather than just blocking you altogether, they’ll probably be more than happy to tell you why.

Offering a place for feedback will allow them to feel heard, while giving you useful information.

“What we’re working toward now is implementing a survey feature. Users want to share that, and having a proper outlet is going to be valuable.”

DON’T hide or de-emphasize the nuclear option.

Having someone unsubscribe is still light-years better than having them report you as spam.

DON’T leave them wondering if it worked.

I gotta confess, I’m sneaking my own gripe in here.

After a user manages their preferences, there should be some kind of confirmation that something has actually happened. That can be a thank you page or even just a simple pop-up that says, “preferences saved.”

Don’t leave your visitors wondering if anything changed.

Now, take a minute and go click your own unsubscribe link. Is it a nightmare or easy as a dream?