Email marketers spend a lot of effort and money to attract subscribers to each email campaign. However, the most terrifying and challenging issue in email marketing is that sometimes the unsubscribe rate reaches its highest level in campaigns. So, what’s the email marketing unsubscribe rate?
An email marketing unsubscribe rate is a key metric for marketers to gauge and measure the success of their email marketing campaigns.
Do you want to understand your email unsubscribe rate better so you can retain more subscribers? It’s no matter of concern! In this guide, I’ll cover everything you need to know about unsubscribe rates.
So, stay tuned!
What Is the Email Marketing Unsubscribe Rate?
The unsubscribe rate is defined as the number of recipients who clicked on the email unsubscribe link and left your email subscriber list compared to the total number of people who received the email.
Simply put, it tells you how many users opt out of your email campaigns—those who will no longer receive them.
As a matter of fact, the unsubscribe rate, or UR, is a warning sign of email campaign effectiveness and a fact of life for email marketers!
What Is a Good Email Unsubscribe Rate?
If you’re researching a good unsubscribe rate for your email campaigns, you’ve probably come across resources that consider a number under 0.5% to be a good one ( SmartInsights, Optinmonster, etc.).
It’s worth mentioning that email unsubscribe rates can vary depending on various factors:
- Industry type & metrics
- Geographic region
- Audience segments
- Email list size
- Nature of the business
- Type of email campaigns
In general, email unsubscribe rates for email campaigns based on industry benchmarks can be considered as follows:
- The excellent unsubscribe rate: Below 0.2%
- The good unsubscribe rate: 0.2% – 0.5%
- The normal unsubscribe rate: 0.5%
- The average email unsubscribe rate: 0.5% – 1%
- The bad unsubscribe rate: Above 1%
What Is Email Marketing’s Average Unsubscribe Rate for Industries and Regions?
As mentioned in the above section, average email marketing unsubscribe rates can vary across industries and geographies.
According to a global report in 2023, for more than 35,000 users in over 20 global regions and over 30 industries, their average unsubscribe rates are as follows: 👇
According to Benchmark, the industry average unsubscribe rate for different regions is 0.19%, and also, based on the Campaign Monitor’s report, the overall average unsubscribe rate across all industries stands at 0.17%.
As you can see in the above tables, based on Benchmark’s report, the unsubscribe rate in 22 different geographic areas and 35 industries is completely variable due to the nature of the business, audience preferences, or other factors.
How To Calculate Email Marketing Unsubscribe Rate?
Now that you have learned what good and bad unsubscribe rates are, you should learn how to calculate them.
Calculating email unsubscribe rates is easier than you think. Just divide the total number of unsubscribes by the total number of email messages delivered. Then, multiply the resulting number by 100 to get a percentage.
If you still don’t understand exactly how to calculate your email campaigns’ unsubscribe rate, stay tuned. Because I’ll explain it with an example. 👇
For example, let’s say you ran an email campaign to 5,000 potential customers for three months. If 5,000 emails are sent and 50 recipients unsubscribe from your list, the unsubscribe rate is 10%.
This is a simple formula to calculate the unsubscribe rate per email campaign (Mailchimp): 👇
Unsubscribe Rate (%) = (Total Number of Unsubscribes ÷ Total Number of Emails Messages Delivered) x 100
For the above example, the email unsubscribe rate can be obtained as follows: 👇
(500 ÷ 5000) × 100= 10%
This is a very high rate for the example I gave, which probably tells you that your email campaign was not successful.
Why Do People Unsubscribe from Email Marketing Campaigns?
You may wonder why email marketing unsubscribe rates for some businesses exceed industry benchmark averages.
Here are four reasons for high unsubscribe rates; let’s explore them: 👇
1. Email Fatigue or Frequency
Email fatigue occurs when subscribers stop interacting with your emails and unsubscribe due to a flood of irrelevant emails and a higher frequency of receiving emails.
In fact, 51% of consumers say they opt out of emails because they receive too many emails often.
The best way to avoid email fatigue is to check your email cadence (the number of emails you send in a given period) based on the average email frequency in your industry.
2. Limited or No Segmentation
To put it bluntly, an email list that is poorly segmented or not segmented at all will sooner or later become empty and lose subscribers. Hence, the email unsubscribe rate will, unfortunately, increase.
So, what’s the solution? If you segment your email list by interest, demographics, geographics, etc., and then cleanse inactive subscribers of these categories, you can be sure to reduce your email unsubscribe rate.
3. Failure to Sign up for the Email Forms
Keep in mind that you can’t expect prospects to stay on your email list if they haven’t signed up.
Hence, there is a high probability that users will immediately unsubscribe from your campaigns.
In addition, strict data privacy laws, such as GDPR or CAN-SPAM, prohibit the use of customers’ personal information without their consent.
If these regulations are violated, your domain’s reputation will be at risk, and your company may be subject to financial fines.
You should only add users who have explicitly given you permission via email sign-up forms.
Always try to collect subscribers’ email addresses through real & reliable lead generation tools like CUFinder.
4. Low-Value & Irrelevant Content
Since content marketing plays a very effective role in increasing engagement rates, email open rates, Click-Through Rates (CTRs), etc., it isn’t surprising that low-quality, irrelevant, and worthless content can be considered a driving factor in unsubscribing campaigns.
According to a survey by HubSpot, 9% of the participants considered low-value content the main reason for unsubscribing, while 17% opted out because of overly promotional content.
Fortunately, several tips can improve the quality of your email content, such as optimizing the subject line, creating short and relevant content, personalizing email content, and using visual content.
8 Proven & Effective Ways to Reduce Email Unsubscribe Rate
For your marketing campaigns to be successful, it’s important to know how to reduce unsubscribe rates.
The good news is that doing this is not as challenging as it seems unless you have some solutions.
In this section, I’ve compiled some tried-and-tested strategies to help you keep your email unsubscribe rate as low as possible.
1. Segment Your Email List
The key to successful email marketing is getting your message to the right people at the right time. Email list segmentation can effectively help email marketers do it.
Email list segmentation is when you segment your subscribers into targeted categories and groups based on the data you have about them. This category of subscribers can be according to the following information:
- Demographics
- Geographics
- Firmographics
- Technographics
- Purchase history
- Email engagement level
- Sales funnel stages
- Which lead magnet did they sign up for?
By segmenting your email list, you can effortlessly send each campaign to your target subscribers based on their interests, needs, and preferences. As a result, you send more relevant content to your target audience and run highly targeted email campaigns.
Klaviyo’s study shows that campaigns with highly segmented lists have a 50% reduction in unsubscribe rates compared to unsegmented lists.
2. Use a Double Opt-in Option
Which one is better? Having inactive emails on your list and paying for them until you lose them! Or don’t have stale and inactive addresses from the beginning!
If you’re automatically adding new subscribers to your email list without requiring email address verification, the bad news is that you’re easily increasing your unsubscribe rate.
Confirming subscribers’ email addresses before they are added to your list is called double opt-in. When users sign up, you need to send them a confirmation email, and then they will become your subscribers after the verification process.
By doing this, you make sure that the user’s email is genuine.
But if someone:
- Send a fake email address or
- Makes a typo in her/his email address or
- Sign up without the user’s permission.
What happens? They won’t receive the confirmation email and won’t be able to subscribe. As a result, these people never make it to your list.
Once you send the next email, the Email Service Provider (ESP) will unsubscribe those added to your list by default from the single opt-in process, as the email will be canceled.
That being said, be sure to enable double opt-in verification. There are a thousand reasons for this.
But if you still haven’t configured this option, now is the time to do it. Most ESPs have these settings by default.
3. Have a Regular Sending Schedule
Even determining the time of sending emails is very effective and critical to reducing unsubscribe rates.
So, try to find the best time to send the email so that the possibility of email ignoring gets as low as possible and avoid the consequences, such as unsubscribing from emails.
According to studies conducted by several reputable brands, such as Salesforce and Sender, the best time to send email campaigns is between 8:00 a.m. and 12:00 a.m. on weekdays. This specific time has consistently seen higher open rates than other hours.
You can also find the golden time to send your email with A/B testing, which involves sending two variations of an email to a small group to see which one performs better.
However, choosing the time can vary based on occasions, seasons, or local and international events.
The bottom line is that you should always pay enough attention to establishing the right schedule to start your campaigns.
4. Create Compelling Subject Lines
Considering the huge volume of emails that are sent to people daily, writing a subject line that is eye-catching is highly effective in the opening and unsubscribing rate of your email.
Fascinating, personalized, and stimulating subject lines make subscribers curious enough to open and engage with the email content, thereby reducing the chance of opting out.
I asked email marketers and experts what not to do in your email subject line. Here are 5 of the most common email subject line mistakes to avoid, along with examples: 👇
5. Optimize for Mobile Devices
If your emails are incompatible with mobile phones, they may cause subscribers problems, such as images not loading, buttons not being clickable, lines and texts not aligning, etc. In these cases, users prefer to unsubscribe.
Exact statistics vary, but most studies demonstrate that 40-70% of emails are opened on mobile phones. Consequently, you should pay attention to optimization and compatibility with mobile phones.
As a whole, responsive email will appear correctly on all devices of all sizes, from desktops to smartphones.
If you use popular email marketing automation tools like HubSpot or MailChimp, etc., don’t worry; the emails are automatically set up for mobile as well.
Interested in learning more about marketing automation? Follow our blog post on this topic.
6. Monitor and Act on Feedback
Pay attention to collecting feedback from your subscribers.
You can send email surveys to your subscribers to get feedback on the type of emails and content they want to receive from you.
This will help you understand what content your prospects prefer and what topics they are interested in.
Meanwhile, use this information to improve your email marketing strategy, boost engagement, and prevent an increase in the unsubscribe rate.
7. Keep Your Email List Clean
Gathering the email addresses of your prospects is not enough to build an email list.
You should clean your email list periodically by removing unsubscribed or inactive users, adding new users, and correcting existing emails.
This will aid you in sending emails only to interested and targeted audiences, as well as keep your domain reputation intact.
Bonus Tip: Use the Free Email Verifier of CUFinder
CUFinder’s free email checker can improve your email deliverability rates, reduce bounce and unsubscribe rates, prevent fraudulent sign-ups, and keep your email list clean.
Most importantly, this free email verifier service guarantees an accuracy rate of over 98%.
8. Create Relevant & Quality Email Content
The relevance of your content has a direct impact on email unsubscribe rates.
Constantly sending irrelevant content bores users and so they are forced to leave your email list.
Also, quality is a determining factor. If you’re sending content that is not inefficient & useful, then it may go up the unsubscribe rate.
To find out what content your subscribers like and what they expect from you, you can do in-depth research on them.
Create a content calendar that reflects the needs, interests, and preferences of your subscribers and aligns with the goals of your email marketing campaigns.
In Closing
You might be surprised, but email marketing can be your best friend or worst enemy as a business owner. Many key metrics affect its performance, such as open rate, engagement, CTR, unsubscribe rate, etc. Understanding your email marketing unsubscribe rate can make a huge difference in your business’s success.
If you follow the effective and actionable strategies and techniques we’ve introduced in this article, you can improve your email marketing unsubscribe rate and achieve better results in your campaigns.
Remember, a well-managed email list from the best email list provider like CUFinder is a valuable asset to your brand.
FAQs
1. What is a bad email unsubscribe rate?
Based on data from available reports, a rate higher than 1% is usually considered a bad email unsubscribe rate.
2. What is the KPI unsubscribe rate?
The KPI unsubscribe rate shows the percentage of recipients who unsubscribe from subsequent emails. This indicates potential content, frequency, or targeting issues with email campaigns.
3. What is a too high unsubscribe rate?
According to many marketing experts, a too-high email unsubscribe rate (above 2%) can cause you to lose subscribers and decrease engagement and sales.
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