Who unsubscribes from your emails?

During a emailing audit for one of our customers, we carried out an in-depth analysis of their unsubscribers. Our aim: to understand who they are. On average, after how many emails did they unsubscribe? Were they more or less recent contacts? Were they used to opening and clicking on your newsletters? In a nutshell, what is the business impact of letting your subscribers go? In this article, you'll find out how we've managed to answer these questions with specific dashboards.

How is the email unsubscribe rate calculated?

Before delving into the subject, let's recall the definition of the churn rate: it corresponds to the number of unsubscribers divided by the number of emails delivered.

The number of unsubscribers can come from 2 sources:

• From your email footer (or the header if you're one of those who respect best practices)
• From the list-unsubscribe function (available only on Gmail, Laposte.net, SFR - promo box)

Average churn rate

The latest emailing benchmarks indicate churn rates ranging from 0.1 % to 1 %. This rate varies mainly according to the sources of collection and commercial pressure. When addresses are collected via internal forms (purchase or newsletter subscription), the churn rate is generally low, around 0.1 %.

Let's list the questions people ask about unsubscribing in email marketing

It's normal for contacts to unsubscribe. However, when the number of unsubscribes increases, it's crucial to ask yourself: what is the impact on business to let these subscribers go?

Other questions include:

• How many emails do they receive before unsubscribing?
• How many emails did they receive in the 28 days prior to unsubscribing?
• Are unsubscribers recent or older contacts in the database?
• Were unsubscribers active or inactive emails before unsubscribing?
• Were unsubscribers regular or occasional buyers?

The answers to these questions are used to refine the definitions of the commercial pressure in emailing and inactive emailsbut also that of welcoming new base subscribers.

Data analysis on email unsubscribers

To find out who your unsubscribers are, you need to ask your data teams for dashboards. The statistics provided by your email routing tool won't be enough to obtain all the information you need. At best, your routing tool will tell you the number of unsubscribers, the temporal evolution, the type of campaigns they unsubscribe from the most, and which target unsubscribes the most. But to answer the above questions, we need the following data tables.

Here is the brief we sent to the DATA teams:

Number of emails received before unsubscribing

• Need To understand the average number of campaigns a contact receives before unsubscribing.
• Filter Date of unsubscription less than 2 years ago
• Format .csv file

Desired dashboards :

To evaluate the business impact and go further in the analysis, you need to add columns to this table with business criteria in your database. Here, we've opted for RFM status, loyalty program membership (or not) and collection type (opt-in or opt-out).

Number of emails received in the last 28 days before unsubscribing

• Need To understand whether a too-intensive mailing rhythm is the cause of their unsubscribing.
• Filter Date of unsubscription less than 2 years ago
• Format .csv file

Desired dashboards :

Are unsubscribers recent or older contacts in the database?

• Need How many of the unsubscribers from the last 2 years unsubscribed after 1 month, between 1 and 2 months, etc.?
• Filter Date of unsubscription less than 2 years ago
• Format .csv file

Desired dashboards :

Were unsubscribers active or inactive emails before unsubscribing?

• Need : know the number of campaigns without clicks or openings before unsubscribing
• Filter Date of unsubscription less than 2 years ago
• Format .csv file

Focus on openings

Desired dashboards :

Focus on openings + months

Focus clic

Focus clicks + months

Number of months without purchases before unsubscribing

• Need Find out the number of months without purchases before unsubscribing
• Filter Unsubscription date less than 2 years 1 year
• Format .csv file

Desired dashboards :

The limits of data analysis on email churn

Ideally, you should have the dashboards mentioned above. In practice, however, your DATA teams may feel that the volume of data to be processed is too great, and that they cannot produce these tables for technical reasons. In this case, you can restrict the filter to 1 year or less, rather than 2 years.

Conclusion of Badsender

Analyzing who your unsubscribers are is extremely useful for assessing business impact. Once you've answered this question, you'll have answers to other essential questions in email marketing:

• Refining sales pressure This analysis helps to identify the types of contacts who tolerate commercial pressure more or less well, and the number of emails tolerated. It can also be used to determine the impact of a more frantic mailing rhythm (e.g. the Black Friday, Christmas and winter sales combo) on churn.
• Understanding the behavior of new contacts If you observe a high churn rate in the "new subscribers" segment, this underlines the importance of taking care at the start of the relationship with them by setting up a genuine welcome scenario.
• Define inactive mailings You get a more precise definition of who's inactive, rather than just guessing.
• Optimizing message content You'll be able to identify blocks of content to include in your newsletters and in your marketing automation, so you can focus your strategy on minimizing unsubscribes.

Knowing who your unsubscribers are allows you to really direct your marketing strategy.