Avoiding the pain of moving your subscriber lists

Several times a week I get a call or an email from a potential client who is unhappy with their current email / autoresponder provider and wants to move their existing mailing list over to 1AutomationWiz.com.

The question that always comes up is, “Will my clients have to re-optin if I use your system?”

My answer is always the same. Yes they will. It’s something that ANY legitimate mail provider will insist on before allowing your list into their email system. Why?

Honestly, it’s to protect their network and all of their clients. After all they don’t want some spammer uploading a bunch of bogus email addresses to the system and doing a spam blast.

But the real reason potential clients always seem to ask this question is because most people worry about “losing subscribers” if they move their list and ask the subscribers to confirm their subscription. To that (and I am being brutally honest here) I say that it’s a worry based out ego and fear.

I talk to people every day who say that they “heard” that if they move their lists, that they’ll loose “30-50%” of their lists.

The reality is that you will always lose “some” subscribers when you move. It’s going to happen. If you want to change mailing providers you have to accept this reality and move on.

But let’s take a look at what you’re really “losing” if some of your subscribers don’t follow you to the new list management or autoresponder provider.

If you have an existing subscriber that doesn’t respond to your request that they reconfirm their subscription there are only a few possible reasons – and some of them are pretty hard to swallow.

1) They never received your confirmation request email.
The reality: Hardly ever happens in real life. The exception is that if they use spamarrest or some filter but never bother to check the spam folder.

2) They were busy and never got around to clicking on the confirmation email link.

The reality: Yes this does happen sometimes. But what is this really saying about how important your subscriber thinks communications from YOU really are?

After all, how long does it take to click a link in an email? See the point? If they can’t be bothered to click that link, chances are they really aren’t too eager to hear anymore from you.

3) For some reason the email bounced at the ISP because subscribers’ mailbox was full.

The reality: The subscriber has abandoned that address and moved on to another email address. So the question is, can they really even be considered subscribers anymore?

4) There was a network outage someplace and the confirmation email was never delivered to them.

The reality: Ok, this happens sometimes, however most email systems will try to redeliver your message several times before marking it as a “bad address.” Again, chances are that the subscriber has abandoned that email address.

Of course there are isolated cases of real technical issues on the subscribers’ end where they just can’t get your mail but the percentage is so small in comparison to your list size that its inconcequental.

5) Your list isn’t as big as you really think. A certain portion of your list is “dead wood.”

The reality: No matter how pretty it up, a percentage of your list is made up of non-responsive subscribers and abandoned email addresses.

The bottom line is that if you have existing subscribers that do not confirm their subscription to your lists, one of two things has happened:

They really don’t want to be on your list anymore OR you got lazy.

So what can you do about it?

Here is a very simple secret to keeping more of your subscribers active when you ask them to reconfirm their subscription when you move them to a new mailing provider.

Let’s say you plan on moving over your list to a new provider on a Friday. To ensure that the majority of your subscribers move with you, simply email them on Thursday and TELL them that you are moving to a new provider.

Then give them instructions – ie tell them what to do. Tell that that you will be sending them another email tomorrow that will ask them to click a link to confirming their subscription to your newsletter, ezine, etc.

Then take a moment and briefly remind them why they subscribed in the first place and how much value they get when they read your stuff.

Next incentivise them (a BRIBE) offer them something with a high perceived value as a reward for confirming their subscription. It could be just about anything.

I recommend something in a digital format for ease of delivery. It could be a free report, video, mp3, software or a coupon toward their next purchase with you.

If you do this I can gurantee that you will lose far less subscribers when you move then if you skip this very important step.

Moving your mailing list to a new autoresponder / list provider can be scary, but it doesn’t have to be traumatic.