What is email unsubscribe rate?
The unsubscribe rate of an email is the number of people who unsubscribed or opted out of your mailing list after an email campaign divided by the number of emails delivered.
It measures the percentage of subscribers who no longer wish to receive your emails.
How to calculate unsubscribe rate?
To calculate the unsubscribe rate of an email campaign, divide the ‘number of users unsubscribed’ by the ‘number of emails delivered’ and multiply it by 100.
Most of the email service providers and email marketing platforms will calculate this for you. You can calculate this email marketing metric for weekly, monthly, or even yearly time frames.
Formula for calculating unsubscribe rate
Real-life example of unsubscribe rate
Let’s say you sent an email to 120 people and 10 of them get bounced, which means 110 emails got successfully delivered.
Out of those 110 recipients, 2 of them decided to unsubscribe from your list. This way, your unsubscribe rate will be: 2/110 x 100 = 1.81%
What’s considered a good unsubscribe rate? (benchmark)
A good unsubscribe rate for an email campaign is anything below 0.5%. If the rate is below 0.2% it’s soundest and if the rate is more than 0.5% you need to pay attention to your email campaigns.
A 2022 study by Mailchimp reveals that the industry average email unsubscribe rate is 0.26%.
The more users unsubscribe, the more it damages your sender reputation.
In cases where you have a high unsubscribe rate, your email strategy might have gaps, and you may need to revise it.
Ways to reduce your unsubscribe rate
- Run a targeted email campaign: Segment your email list subscribers based on their age, location, interests, and other categories. This will help you send only specific and targeted emails to your audience – which interests them, rather than shooting vague emails. Read this massive email segmentation guide: 50 Email Segmentation Tips You Need to Use Now
- Don’t send emails too frequently: If you send too few emails, you may be forgotten. If too many, you’ll either end up in spam or people will unsubscribe. It’s better to test with different frequencies to finalize what gets you the most results. Wondering what’s the best email frequency? Read this: Email Frequency in Numbers
- Make sure to send only useful and relevant emails: When you’ve segmented your list, it’s important to send emails catering to the specific needs of your subscribers. Understand your audience and send only useful and relevant emails. This guide might help you: 8 Types of Email Content to Send Your Audience