As you continue on with your email marketing campaign, you’ll have subscribers drop off your list. At first, it may seem like a personal affront. Perhaps you did something wrong, or your product isn’t as good as you thought it was. It may make you second-guess yourself.

But, the truth is people drop off of mailing lists for a lot of reasons that have nothing to do with you. They may have only signed up to get a discount or another offer on your site, or they may have decided they aren’t as interested in your services as they thought they were. Maybe they just feel like they’re getting more email than they can handle and want to cut down on the volume.

It’s fine to lose subscribers. After all, you only want people on your list who are interested in your product. People who want to read the informative articles you provide, and find out about the products you offer. Just having names on a list isn’t the point – it’s having quality names of people who are likely to buy from you.

Even the very best email lists get unsubscribe requests all the time. But by monitoring those requests, you can gauge how good a job your doing with your list. If the number is high – say, 10 or 20 percent – you need to take a hard look at the promotional materials you’re sending out and figure out what you may be able to do better. Maybe your articles are informative, but they’re not entertaining enough. Maybe you need to provide a little more variety in your information.

One way that a lot of marketers lose subscribers is by focusing too heavily on sales and product offers and not offering any interesting content. When the people on your list realize that you’re only trying to sell them stuff and not offering them anything in return, they may very well decide to unsubscribe. You have to provide well written, educational material that will enlighten them and reinforce that you’re an expert who’s sharing their knowledge. Offer them subscriber-only web content or discounts, and personally answer every email you get about your list and your site. Your relationship with your mailing list is just that – a relationship. You have to hold up your end by offering them something in return for their continued attention.

As you build up your opt-in mailing list, don’t be discouraged by a small number of unsubscribe requests. It’s part of the job. Keep offering high quality content along with product offers and ads, and know that the readers who are really interested will stick around, and they’ll become loyal customers.