Put Yourself in Your Subscriber’s Shoes

Put Yourself in Your Subscriber’s Shoes

Here at Twilio, one of our company values is to ‘wear the customer’s shoes’. I often recommend senders have that same mentality. It can be easy to forget when we are chasing revenue goals that every email we send is delivered to a human being. Looking at your email program from your subscribers’s perspective can be an eye-opening experience. 

Opt in 

Let’s start with the beginning of the customer lifecycle in the world of email: opt in. Nothing is more important than the beginning of the relationship between sender and subscriber. Open your opt in form and go through the process. Is it clear that you are opting in to receive emails? After you sign up, do you receive a welcome email quickly? Does the content of the welcome email line up with what you would expect to receive? Welcome emails often have some of the highest engagement of all emails you will send to a subscriber. It’s important to make sure you set the best expectations and start the sender-subscriber relationship off on the right foot. 

Content

After the welcome email or journey ends, what sorts of emails do you start to receive as a subscriber? Again, ask yourself, are these the types of emails I would want to receive as a subscriber? Did I sign up for newsletters and instead I’m getting a lot of sales emails? Is the content tailored toward me or does it feel like I’m getting generic content? Subscribers in 2025 expect emails to be somewhat tailored to their interests, browsing history, purchase history, etc. 

Frequency

This is a big one. How many emails would you expect to receive when you signed up vs how many emails are you actually receiving? Senders can often get caught up in the line of thinking that more emails = more revenue. Subscribers don’t see it the same way. If you are sending too many emails to each subscriber, this can lead to more unsubscribes, spam complaints, and ignored emails. Reduce sending frequency to subscribers that are not showing a lot of engagement with your emails. Eventually, stop sending to subscribers that never engage with your emails. 

Opt Out

Senders need to face another harsh reality… some subscribers will opt out of your emails. Not every subscriber will want to continue receiving your emails until the end of time. It’s ok. It’s expected. Go through your opt out process and ask yourself a very important question: is the process clear? Is the unsubscribe link easy to find in the email? When you do click on the link, is that opt out page simple and easy to follow? The last thing you want is for someone to get frustrated during the opt out process and instead decide to mark the email as spam. Inbox Providers like Gmail and Yahoo understand that unsubscribers will happen, but there is very little wiggle room around spam complaints. 

Audit Your Email Program

When you put yourself in your subscriber’s shoes, you are essentially auditing your email program. Our Expert Services team has many, many years of experience auditing email programs to find issues around your opt-in process, content, send frequency, etc. Contact us today to figure out which areas of your email program could be improved.