At what point do people unsubscribe

[René_Kamine]

Hi

Is there any research around at what point or after how many emails does someone unsubscribe?

We send a lot of emails so trying to understand behaviour in order to optimise our communication cadence & how often we send emails.

Basically how much is too much before someone unsubscribes?

Many thanks in advance.

[Karan_Hari3]

Hi René Kamine ,

My take on this would be that if people are not receiving the relevant content, and if your marketing efforts are not rightly targeted, it wouldn't take long before your unsubscribe rates increase.

My recommendation would be that if you are sending a lot of emails, it would benefit to have an "Email Preference Center" and have a special focus on all your emails to let leads update their preferences on what sort of communication they want to receive, or what specific products are they interested in . Additionally to be more creative, you can also include a 90 day "Email Vacation" option and efforts on similar lines, to prevent from loosing a lead by just the click of an unsubscribe button.

There is a lot of information in the community around Email preference centers and how to set up one. You might want to check them out.

Best Always,

Karan Hari

[René_Kamine]

Hi Karan Hari​

Thanks for your reply. Yes we have a preference centre. I wouldn't say it's a sophisticated one but we do have one - Marketing, Editorial & Third Party. It's on the to-do list to improve the preference centre. And we are currently working with a Marketo strategist to help us align our communications to be more relevant. We are definitely on the right path to a better user experience from an email point of view. But am curious to know at what point does someone feel we've over stepped the communication boundary so to speak.

Cheers

[Karan_Hari3 · Accepted solution]

Hi René Kamine ,

For the above highlighted question, in my humble opinion and to the best of my knowledge, I'm afraid it cannot be generalized as to " at what point will some one unsubscribe". It can be a completely subjective reason as to why some one unsubscribes and factoring in the "number of communication" to gauge unsubscribes might not be the right approach. Rather, to focus on the "Right & Targeted communication" would be the correct approach to tackle the problem of unsubscribes!

Best Always,

Karan Hari

[René_Kamine]

Hi Karan Hari​

I think you're bang on. That was my thought as well but just wanted to confirm others felt the same.

Thanks

[Karan_Hari3]

Thanks René Kamine​!

Best Always,

Karan Hari

[Ankit_Dua]

Hi Rene,

I would suggest before sending out the email to the database, you ensure following steps:

1. Identify the email goals:

If you are looking to increase the website traffic then your email cadence will differ and you may get more unsubscribe as in this case you might be sending more number of emails.

But, if your goal is to improve engagement make sure your are sending emails to the targeted list only. As, sending irrelevant emails may increase the unsubscribe rate.

2. Let your customers choose what emails they want ( Preference center)

You can build and email preference center and let them choose what content they want to see and how often they want to see. By doing this you make decrease the number of unsubscribes.

To start with you can start with basic preference center which can make modifications as per your requirement.

3. Email Cadence

Make sure you are not hitting database too often or too many times.

As, hitting database too many times, can:

1. May burn out your clients and they may not read your emails.

2. They may unsubscribe.

3. They may hit the spam button.

Again, sending emails too often, may:

1. Increase the hard bounce and email invalid as they might have changed the company due to which there email address will change.

Also, you can also create an email counter for the people for whom you get hard bounces, every time you get a hard bounce you can add a score of +1 to that counter and if the email does not deliver even after 5 hard bounces you can remove these leads from the database.

Thanks