I have subscribed to an e-mail newsletter from a site which sells mostly books. Lately all their ‘great offers, great titles’ have been totally useless for me, so when the latest newsletter came today, I thought to unsubscribe from their service. But I didn’t. Why? Well, again we can see the power behind an emotion ‘I’m going to miss out on something’ in action.

Usually email newsletters have a link to unsubscribe from them, and when you do it, there’s often this rather useless message ‘Do you really want to unsubscribe from this?’ waiting for you at the site. And most of the time – because you feel they didn’t even want you to stay it seems – you press Yes and that’s that. Easy for you, stupid move from the site builder, because now they have lost you, and most likely for ever.

So why didn’t I then quit this particular newsletter I mentioned? Because there was a catch behind the unsubscription link. The message wasn’t just as dumb as it usually is. Instead, it was more like this:

When you’re not a registered client anymore you are giving up your possibility to achieve:

• Offers without shipping fees
• Special offers based on your previously bought items
• Tips about new title’s
• Priority sales, campaigns and pre-orders

See the bold letters? Very strong persuasion in those isn’t it?

So what, you might ask? No big deal. Well, for me, already the second of those reasons made me un-unsubscribe, so to speak. It is a funny thing; although I haven’t received lately any good offers based on my interests in titles like Social Media, Marketing, Sales, Self-improvement and Creativity, I still felt ‘Well, what the heck, the newsletter doesn’t come that often, I might as well let it come. Maybe there’s going to be a good item one day.”

This is a very powerful observation, on which you should build up these kinds of conversations with the users if you want to engage them to your service, site or something else: What will they miss out if they drop you off.

Because once they’re gone, they most likely will never come back no more and they’re with someone else instead.