Don’t Fear Email Unsubscribes

If you’ve been following along for a while, you know that we are always telling people to send MORE emails. Most people are under sending to their list. If you want to make more money, send more emails! 

Many email marketers are uncomfortable with this though because they fear people unsubscribing from their list. This is a pretty common fear. No one likes to see it, you put a lot of work into growing your email list, and it can be hard not to take it personally when you and your team have worked so hard creating emails. 

Email unsubscribes can actually be a good thing, though. Here’s why.

Email Unsubscribes Provide a Growth Metric

You want to see month over month list growth. Calculate your unsubscribe rate multiply that by your total subscribers, and you’ll know the minimum amount of subscribers you need each month to keep your list stable.

If you have a growth percentage goal, and it to the unsubscribe rate. You now know how many subscribers you need.

What is a normal unsubscribe rate? 

An unsubscribe rate below 0.5% is normal. If you’re above that, start with cleaning your email list. Cleaning your list should help, but if it doesn’t improve your unsubscribe rate, look at your send rate. If your send rate isn’t out of control, make sure your content has value. If you’re sending things your audience isn’t interested in, they are going to unsubscribe. 

Email Unsubscribes Reduces Email Marketing Costs

Sending emails costs money. Yes, it costs less than other channels, but if you’re sending to people who don’t want to receive emails you’re not being efficient with your marketing budget. 

Unsubscribes keep from paying you to send emails to people who are not interested in your company or products. 

Hint – You should also clean your list regularly to remove unengaged subscribers. This will both decrease costs, improve your metrics, and boost deliverability.

Email Unsubscribes are Better Than Being Marked as “Junk” or “Spam”

If someone has read your emails and decided your business is not for them (or they would rather keep up with you through a different channel) you absolutely want them to unsubscribe!

Because if they don’t unsubscribe, you know what they are going to do? Mark you as spam or junk to get you out of their inbox. 

Your emails being marked as spam can impact your email deliverability. This is what you should really fear. More on that here. 

Your company’s messaging should be written for specific target audience. You are bound to have people who sign up and then realize they are not part of that audience. Let them go and keep creating killer content for your audience. 

Email Unsubscribes Keep Your List Clean

Email list health is really important, and an unengaged list can significantly affect deliverability. You want an engaged email list, and you keep it engaged by cleaning it regularly. 

Someone who signed up for an offer they never used or who has no intention of being a customer is someone you are going to end up scrubbing from your list when you clean it. 

A subscriber removing themselves is saving you time and money from having to do it yourself.

If it has been a while since you cleaned your list, or you’re a first timer, check out our how-to on list cleaning.  

Email Unsubscribes Tell You How Often to Send Emails

As every good marketer knows, you should test everything. We told you above to send more email, but finding the right send rate will take a bit of testing. 

As you increase your sending frequency, if your unsubscribe rate increases beyond the normal rate, you’ll know that you may need to back off. Make sure you have a bit of data before you decide that, though. The increased frequency may just be pulling unengaged users unsubscribes forward, at first. 

Wrapping It Up

Don’t fear email unsubscribes! Having a giant list of uninterested people defeats the point of email marketing. Focus on providing value and continuing to grow your list.