Unsubscribe rates and unsubscribes
Improve the quality of your newsletters with these figures
The unsubscribe rate is – just like the bounce rate – an important figure in email marketing and indicates the quality of your newsletter. The lower, the better!
- “Unsubscribes” show in absolute numbers, how many recipients have unsubscribed after you’ve sent them a newsletter.
- The “unsubscribe rate” gives the percentage of unsubscribes in relation to all newsletter recipients.
What unsubscribes and unsubscribe rates mean to you and how to determine them
5 useful steps
1. Show strength: Make unsubscribes simple
Unsubscribing from your newsletter should be made easy for your subscribers – find out why:
- There can be several reasons for unsubscribes. Once the decision is made, you shouldn’t make it even harder for your subscribers to unsubscribe from your newsletter.
Make an unsubscribe a positive experience:
- It’s counterproductive to prevent recipients from unsubscribing without any trouble. They will mark your emails as spam, which will negatively influence your reputation as a sender.
- Benefit from unsubscribes: A high rate of unopened emails is also negative for your reputation.
- It’s more likely that your subscribers will come back to you, if they had a positive unsubscribe experience.
- All newsletters must contain an unsubscribe link.
2. Identify unsubscribed subscribers via reports
Newsletter campaigns that are sent with CleverReach® already have an integrated unsubscribe link, so that your subscribers can easily unsubscribe from your newsletter.
If they make use of this link, you have two ways of identifying unsubscribed recipients with CleverReach®:
- Reports: You’ll see the unsubscribe rate in your reports. After clicking on the respective mailing, you will get a list of the unsubscribed subscribers.
Download the data of your unsubscribed recipients by clicking on “Action” (you’ll find that in the “Activities” area) as a CSV file and compare it to your own database (for example your online shop).
3. Identify unsubscribed subscribers via segments
Subscriber segments:
Do you want to see all subscribers that have unsubscribed since a certain date? The segment function helps you with this! Create a new segment that has the unsubscribe date from a certain point in time as a condition. The unsubscribe date will automatically be noted in the dataset of the subscriber.
- As only active subscribers are shown through segmentation, you’ll have to detour a little to get the information you need: click on the orange “0” and see the required data.
- The data you see can be exported as a CSV file.
4. Main reasons for unsubscribes
- You send emails far too often: This is the most common reason for unsubscribes. Reduce the frequency of your newsletters or offer them for several subject areas. In some cases, it’s possible to let the subscribers decide upon the newsletter frequency.
- Irrelevant content: Your subscribers are not interested in what you have to say. Is the overall unsubscribe rate not too high, this only applies to some of your recipients. Get to know your target group better and tailor your newsletters to their needs.
- Too many emails, too little time to read: This is a common reason and has nothing to do with the quality of your newsletters – sometimes, subscribers simply don’t want to be reminded of what they are missing and unsubscribe. There’s nothing you can do about this; the subscriber generally wants to reduce their number of emails.
- The subscriber forgot who you are: this often happens to senders who don’t send regular newsletters. Increase the delivery frequency and tell your recipients why they are receiving your emails.
5. Tips
- Show strength: Place your unsubscribe links well visible for your subscribers.
- Use a simple Single-Opt-Out unsubscribe procedure, without an extensive unsubscribe form.
- Don’t ask for login data or passwords; some subscribers might not instantly know them and find it easier to put your emails in the spam folders instead of unsubscribing. Don’t ruin your reputation – make unsubscribing as easy as possible!
- Ask your customers for their feedback on why they unsubscribed. This should be an option and not obligatory for unsubscribing. Many recipients tell you why they want to leave.
- Make sure your recipients really want to unsubscribe. Asking questions like “Are you sure you want to unsubscribe?” makes it impossible that your recipients accidentally unsubscribe.
- Say goodbye with a friendly “Goodbye” than just with a boring and impersonal “You have successfully unsubscribed”.
- Generally, a high unsubscribe rate means that you have to act. No need to be sad, just a slight hint that you have to change something about your newsletters. In some cases, this can only be the frequency or send time.
- The average unsubscribe rate varies depending on your industry.
Analyze unsubscribes and unsubscribe rates with CleverReach®
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