As marketers, we spend a lot of time focusing on the funnel and creating the perfect landing page optimized to convert visitors into leads. I’ve even compiled a list of great resources to help folks get started with their landing pages.

But what about the unsubscribe page? Should you spend time on this page? Well, yes and no.

The unsub page should be clean and simple. It should be as confusing as a traffic light – meaning – not confusing at all.

I highly recommend a simple text statement, box for the email address, and a unsub button. Kind of like this:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There’s just no other way to simplify the unsubscribe process. And in my opinion the goal of your process should be to get unhappy people off your list. This saves you time and money, but also reduces the risk of creating a even more unhappy customer who may start speaking about their displeasure.

Now, if you have a complicated marketing process that involves multiple newsletters, lists and all touch points, you will invariably have to add to this page. But do so cautiously – you don’t want to make it difficult to unsubscribe.

For instance, I have a client that let’s people unsubscribe their email address separately from their phone number. When you hit their unsubscribe page, it looks like the above page. After submitting, it then asks, “would you also like to remove your phone number from our list?” And it walks folks through how to do that.

Perhaps even more importantly, if the email address is cached as a cookie, the unsubscribe page recalls the address for the user so they don’t have to type it. This is particularly helpful if the user has multiple email addresses and is unsure which one they used to sign up on your site.

Still not satisfied? Here’s a great (and humorous) article about unsubscribe pages that I recommend.