Email Marketing by the Numbers: How to Use the World’s Greatest Marketing Tool to Take Any Organization to the Next Level

Unsubscribe Rate

Your unsubscribe rate is an indication of whether you’re keeping up with the expectations and value promised to your constituents. Obviously, you want this number to be between low and nonexistent. You probably know that by law, every commercial email in the United States (and most of the world) must have an “unsubscribe” link found within the email and an easy way for the subscriber to opt-out of receiving future messages.

If the number of individuals unsubscribing from your email program is going up, you will want to reevaluate the relevance of the message and the audience it was delivered to. You should also pay attention to the individuals who are unsubscribing—is it your most valuable customer base? Is it all males? Also, you’ll want to see if these unsubscribes tend to come from one type of email communication. You’re trying to pinpoint trends and reasons in order to act accordingly.

Some marketers are of the mentality that unsubscribes don’t matter. “They don’t want to hear from me, so why should I care about them?” Wrong mentality. This is the most efficient measure of dissatisfaction you will ever get. People may say that they love your exclusive email offers (because they don’t want to offend you), but they may unsubscribe due to inbox clutter. Most of the time, irrelevance or lack of value is to blame. A phone call to that constituent may help you figure ...