The good news (and the bad news): Unsubscribe numbers are small
by Greg Crandell
I’ve got good news and I’ve got bad news.
The good news is: very few people unsubscribe from email campaigns.
The bad news is: very few people unsubscribe from email campaigns.
Scratching your head? So was I, until I thought it over for a while.
A low unsubscribe rate is good news because it indicates that people are interested in what your email have to say. Some of our competitors put the average rate for “finance emails” at about 0.20%. Our study of our own clients’ statistics* suggest that the number is closer to 0.08%. In either case, very few subscribers click “unsubscribe” in their emails. This can be a good sign – a low number of unsubscribes means people are still eager to read your email messages.
Or does it?
Unsubscribing means a user has taken action. Granted, it’s an action that stops them from seeing your message – but were they reading it anyway? Are they sending it directly to the “Trash” folder? Are they browsing, then moving along? Unsubscribes are one way of finding out how engaged your audience is, but there are others:
- Look at the stats of those that opened a given campaign in the past few months. Are there folks that haven’t opened a campaign in the past six months? In a year?
- Who’s clicking through? Check your click-through rates on your subscription list. This will show you how frequently your emails stir someone to an action inside.
- Are you sending more than one campaign? Compare your stats for each. See how different campaigns work on different audiences. What’s happening in the one that performs with higher open and click-through rates?
I’m also concerned that certain senders don’t make unsubscribe links easy to see or use. We advocate that all our clients include clear, easy-to-read links to their unsubscribe pages and forms. That keeps your emails both CAN-SPAM compliant and moving toward an audience that’s eager to read them.
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