The unsubscribe paradox every marketer gets wrong

47 people unsubscribed from your campaign. You're like, oh no, what did I do wrong?

Marketers are scared to let anyone go.

I'd rather have 10,000 engaged subscribers than 100,000 zombies, basically.

They need to just focus on the actual engaged audience size.

Unsubscribes are not the enemy. Boring is the enemy.

You need to be optimizing for quality, not just quantity.

Give yourself the permission to be bold. Some people will unsubscribe no matter what, and that's just okay.

From the open to the click, they're the masters of the flow. Just watch your list grow and your leads turn to go. Did we retain you so far, or do we have to extend it? If you want results, you know you gotta send it. Yeah, you know you gotta send it. Yeah, you know you gotta send it. Yeah, you know you gotta send it.

What's up everyone? Welcome to Send It, where we discuss anything and everything retention marketing, specifically in email and SMS marketing and e-commerce. My name is Jimmy Kim, and I'm here with my co-host.

Chase Diamond.

All right, Chase. So today on this pod, I want to start with a little confession. In my early career, I was terrified of unsubscribes.

Were you, huh? I have to say, we probably all were, right? So I don't know, it kind of feels like a personal rejection. I'm just thinking through this.

Yeah, exactly. I would obsess over them. I'd panic. Those unsubscribe rates were too high and I wanted to keep them as low as possible. And if They crept over like 0.2%, I'd start to panic.

So let me guess, your emails were very boring and probably vanilla because you were playing it safe.

So boring, man. Generic subject lines, vanilla copy, nothing controversial because I was trying not to offend anyone.

Yeah, and I think that really stems down to like the main problem and issue that a lot of people do is like they're optimizing for the wrong thing.

Right, because a low unsubscribe rate doesn't mean that you're doing great. It means that you're doing something Well, it means you're doing nothing interesting.

Yeah, exactly. And I think that really is what people are going to take away from this episode. And what we're going to dive into today is the unsubscribe paradox, as we're calling it.

Yeah.

Why a 1% or why a 0.1% unsubscribe rate might be actually a red flag and why a 0.5% unsubscribe might be totally healthy. Because if nobody's unsubscribing, you're probably not being bold enough. I want to start here on today's pod with psychology. Why do you think marketers are so scared of unsubscribes? Now, I'll tell you what I think it is. I think it's because marketers tend to treat their email lists like gold and it's a precious, fragile thing. Like every subscriber is so important and losing one is like a tragedy.

Yeah, I think that's correct. I also think too, like platforms, the email platforms themselves, Um, they reinforce this. They show you this big, scary kind of unsub report and they make you pay a lot of attention to it.

Yeah.

Like when you're inside of Omnisend, you see the notification that's like 47 people unsubscribed from your campaign. You're like, oh no, what did I do wrong?

And by the way, it's not just Omnisend. This is every single one. We use Omnisend, so that happens to be the one that we're looking at, but this is every single platform. Um, but the thing here is not all subscribers are created equal. A lot of them frankly just were never gonna buy.

Yeah, that's 100% right. In fact, if I, I'd rather have 10,000 engaged subscribers than 100,000 zombies, basically.

Exactly right. I think the problem though is everyone flexes the wrong thing. Most marketers think bigger list equals more revenue, so they optimize for the general list size instead of actually really focusing on the list quality itself.

Yeah, that's the trap because list size is basically a vanity metric.

Yeah. And it's crazy that still in the day and age that we're in, it is. But we've seen brands with half a million subscribers making less money than brands with 50,000 subscribers.

Yeah. And because when you have 500,000 list and it's full of dead weight, people who subscribed 3 years ago who haven't opened an email since, that's just a zombie list.

Yeah, 100%. And those people aren't just neutral. grand scheme of things, they're actually probably hurting you more than they're helping you.

How so?

Yeah, so when you send to them, if they don't open, they don't click, and maybe even they mark you as spam potentially, you know, Gmail and the other providers, Yahoo, etc., they're gonna go, oh, people don't actually want this sender's emails.

Yep. So your deliverability ends up tanking.

That's right. You're actually being punished for emailing people who don't care.

Yeah, no, that's the truth. A big unsubscribed or unengaged list is worse than a small engaged list.

Yeah, always. And yet marketers are scared to let anyone go.

Yeah, no, you're right. All right, so let's talk about the numbers here because I want to define what a good unsubscribe rate— you got a take on that?

Yeah, I'd say like the industry average is about 0.2% to about 0.5% per send. But I think the thing that matters is actually the context.

Okay, what do you mean by that?

Yeah, sure. So a 0.1% unsubscribe rate, that could be great. Or it could mean, like we talked about before, that you're being very boring and your stuff's just vanilla. Um, you know, an unsubscribe rate of 1% could be terrible, or it could mean that you're being bold and on brand, maybe even a little bit polarizing, right?

Yeah, I agree. The number alone doesn't really tell the story.

Right. So you need to look at the bigger picture. What else is happening? Um, and I think it's helpful, like if we break down some scenarios, so Um, let's say like you have a 0.1 unsubscribe rate, but your open rate's 15% and your click rate's 1%. That's probably a red flag.

Oof.

I don't like that. But tell us why here.

Uh, because people aren't just unsubscribing because they're not reading your emails. Um, right. They're just ignoring you. Yeah.

You're invisible ultimately.

Exactly. And being invisible, I think is actually being worse than being aggressive or polarizing, whatever that right word is. Um, at least people unsubscribed because they cared enough to take some sort of action.

Right. So ignoring you means you're like wallpaper, you're background noise.

Yeah. And I think we could probably argue that that's worse for your business than having a higher unsubscribe rate, but also alongside higher engagement.

Yeah, I agree with that sentiment. I'd rather have a 0.5% unsubscribe rate with a 35% open rate rather than a 0.1% unsubscribe rate with a 15% open rate.

Yeah, that's right. I think because like the first scenario means that people are actually paying attention, right? Some love you, some hate you, but at least you're not being kind of meh and whatever and boring.

Yeah. So what do you think a healthy unsubscribe rate looks like for a marketer?

Hey, it's Chase. Got 30 quick seconds? We built something specifically for you. Jimmy and I together have over 20 years of combined experience in email marketing, and we finally put everything together in one place, and it's called Ecom Email Certified. I know it's fancy, fancy, but it's gonna be great. Whether you're brand new or running campaigns for 7, 8, 9-figure brands, it covers it all. Deliverability, AI, copywriting, design, strategy, SMS, literally everything. Has over 175 total modules totaling 25+ hours of content. Even has quizzes, a community, and you're gonna get a real certification. It's way better than college, right? Don't tell your professor that, but it is. And we've designed it to take you from beginner to certified expert. We're talking about the kind of marketer who actually moves the needle and drives real revenue. Check it out at ecomemailcertified.com. And now back to the pod. Yeah, so I think like that, you know, 0.3 upwards to like 0.5% unsubscribe rate with an open rate of like north of 30%, you know, click rate hopefully of like 2, 3 plus percent. Um, and you're actually driving solid revenue. I think those are some benchmarks for when you actually know you're doing pretty well.

Yeah, because if you're being bold and opinionated, well, some people self-select out.

Exactly. And you're not going to be for everyone. And that's okay. And that's actually a bigger pro than it is a con.

Yeah, it means that you have a point of view and you stand for something as a brand.

Yeah, right. And the people who stay, those are your tribe. Those are your people. That's your community. They're engaged. They're hopefully buying. They're your advocates.

Yeah, versus trying to appeal to everybody and everyone and ending up appealing to, well, Yeah, exactly. Okay, so there's a limit to this, right? Like you're consistently at 1% or higher, something's probably a little broken.

Yeah, it's not that ongoing 1% or higher is typically a red flag. Um, and I think it could mean a number of things.

Okay, like what?

I think a few that come to mind initially is, uh, number one is you're going to be emailing folks way too often. Uh, maybe you're sending like a daily email when your popup said that you're gonna send weekly. Or it could be that the content that you're sending is just not relevant and/or it could be kind of annoying to people. Maybe even too, like the way in which you acquired your list in terms of buying lists, et cetera, just wasn't folks that actually opted in and therefore they never actually cared about you or knew about you. And then the last part could be like you're sending to unengaged people who probably should just be suppressed Yeah, entirely.

So a high unsubscribe rate in hindsight can also mean that you're being bold, but it could also mean that you're kind of screwing up.

Yeah, that's right. Like, and again, you have to diagnose. It just really depends. But if you launch like a controversial campaign and you get a 1% unsubscribe spike, that might be fine, right? But if you're consistently at that 1% or higher, then it's pretty likely that you have a problem.

Yeah, so the key is looking at trends and not just one-off spikes.

Yep, exactly.

All right, well, let's shift gears. Let's talk about what happens when you optimize for low unsubscribe rates, because I think this is where brands really hurt themselves.

Yeah, I think this is a big, big trap that's very easy, unfortunately, to fall into. And you kind of start like self-censoring and kind of, yeah, just being really strict on what you're doing.

Yeah.

Like you write a subject line and when you think, wait, is this too bold? Will people unsubscribe? That definitely is not a thought.

Yeah. And then you're going to water it down.

Yeah, exactly. And then you go from the mistake is costing you thousands to some helpful tips for your business. Like you can really shift the tone of that email.

Yeah. The second one's really boring, right? Not many people, if any, are actually going to open that.

Right. So in effort to avoid unsubscribes, you actually tank your open rates.

Which means fewer people end up going to see your email, which then in turn means less revenue.

So you're losing money to avoid losing subscribers who probably weren't buying anyways.

Yeah. And then you get on this path of just optimizing for the wrong thing.

And you know, there's a thing I noticed, Chase, is when I've seen brands that are scared of unsubscribes, they tend to lose their personality almost.

Do you mind elaborating on that?

Yeah, man. So every email becomes this like weird sanitized corporate speak where it's like, dear valued customer, we hope your email finds you well.

I had opened a couple of those before this pod and man, those were rough.

And you know what? The person on the other end, the customer can smell that it's not authentic. It doesn't sound like a real person. It just sounds like a robot.

So essentially even those that do open, it's going to be very hard for them to actually connect with it.

Yeah, there's definitely no relationship being built here. You're sending up promotional spam ultimately.

And at the end of the day, I think most of us know this by now, but relationships are actually what drives retention, not these kind of generic promos.

Yeah, I'd rather have someone unsubscribe because my brand isn't for them than for them to just like ignore me forever.

Right. With the unsubscribes, at least it's honest. Um, you know, the part that just ignores you, Gives you and means nothing.

Okay. So I had another thought. Here's another problem I think about is, you know, playing it safe is you're ultimately attracting the wrong type of subscriber.

How so?

Okay. So if your email is generic and bland, only people who stick around are discount hunters or probably freebie seekers.

Interesting. Yeah, I think that's a good point.

Because you're not giving them a reason to care about your brand. You're just offering deals at this point.

Got it. So these folks are only engaging if and when you discount.

Exactly. And then you're stuck in a cycle where you have to keep discounting to keep them engaged.

Yeah. Whereas if you're bold and opinionated, you're actually going to probably then attract the people who actually care about your mission and your values and what you have to say.

100%. These are the people who pay full price because they believe in what you stand for and what you sell.

Yeah. So I think in summary here, what we're saying then is playing it safe is going to cost you margin.

Totally. And then you end up with this discount addict or you end up with this discount addicted list because you never gave them a reason to care about anything else.

Yeah, that's so true. Okay, so let's flip this, right? Let's answer then, when are unsubscribes actually a good sign?

Okay, I think there are probably a couple scenarios and we'll go back and forth here a little bit, but there's a couple I can think of why unsubscribes means that you're doing something right. So the first scenario is that, and we've talked about this, is you take a stance on something controversial Do you mind sharing an example here? Yeah, let's talk about like a sustainability brand, right? And you send an email about why your fast fashion is destroying the planet.

Okay. Yeah, so I could see that some people are probably going to unsubscribe here.

Yeah, some people just don't care about sustainability and people who shop at Shein, for example, they're probably going to bounce from that message.

Right. But on the flip then, the people who stay, those are the ones that are your tribe. Those are the ones that care. Care.

Exactly. They're aligned with your values. Those are the people who become those lifelong customers.

So part of what's happening here is that you're actually filtering for the right audience.

Yep. And I'd argue that that unsubscribe spike is almost a win and not a loss.

So at the end of the day, right, like you're not building just a stale static list, you're actually focused on building the community.

Yep, that's right. All right, you got a scenario?

Yeah. So the second scenario I was thinking about was, uh, you're launching a new product or shifting your brand.

Okay. That's interesting. Like a coffee brand and you suddenly launch apparel.

Yeah, exactly. So, you know, say you're only interested in coffee. They might be like, wait, what? Where did this come from? This is from left field. Like, this isn't what I was on here for.

Yeah. And then they'll unsubscribe because that's okay because you're expanding your brand.

Right. You're attracting now a new audience while naturally shedding some people who were only interested. And kind of the OG thing that you were known for sold.

And you know, that brings up a good point because if you're too scared of unsubscribes, you'll probably never innovate.

Right, which means you might be stuck selling the same thing forever.

Exactly. So some level of churn is the cost of evolution ultimately. All right, got another one for me?

Well said. Yeah, the third one here would be like you're intentionally actually cleansing your list.

All right. Real quick one for you. Big news. Commerce Roundtable is hitting the road this June with Retention Roadshow. We're hitting 4 cities, New York, Miami, LA, and Austin. And here's what's really cool. This is a half-day workshop-style event built specifically for retention marketers. That's you. We're talking about tactical sessions with email, SMS, AI, and lifecycle. This is the stuff that moves the needle on repeat purchasing and LTV. And these will be small rooms. We're talking 75 to 100 people max. There won't be any fluff or high-level theory. This is really walking into the practicality. Plus, you're going to walk away with strategies that you can implement that week. Plus, we're going to include breakfast, lunch, and of course, plenty of networking to have real conversations with the great people around you. Look, tickets are limited because of the room sizes. So you can go over to commerceroundtable.com/roadshow. We're going to put the link below and use this code SENDIT. So to get $25 off a ticket, it's not very expensive anyways to go. Again, we're coming to New York, Miami, LA, commerceroundtable.com/roadshow. Code, send it. Come hang out with me. Come hang out with Chase. Hang out with a bunch of retention marketers. Back to the pod. Okay. This is a big one. Sometimes you need people to be actively encouraged to— sometimes you need to encourage active unengaged people or unengaged people to leave basically.

Right. So how do people actually do that?

Yeah, I think this is called the re-engagement campaign that says, hey, we noticed you haven't opened our emails in the last 6 months. Do you still want to hear from us?

Right. Very easy to set up and send within Omnisend, make it super simple. And you just want to make it easy for people to opt out.

Yeah.

So you're literally saying if you're not interested anymore, that's totally fine. Just click here and go home, go away.

Right. And with this, we do need to set the expectation that you will get a spike in unsubscribes.

Yeah, but this is a good spike in my opinion because you now have a cleaner, more engaged list.

Right, and alongside that, your deliverability is actually going to improve because now you're not sending to people who just ignore you and tune you out.

Exactly. So the unsubscribe spike is kind of a feature, not a bug.

Yeah, I love that. You're intentionally pruning the dead weight by allowing people to self-select and raise their hand saying, I'm out.

Yeah, and people who stay on that list are actually interested. Your engagement metrics will probably go up, your deliverability goes up, and ironically, often, Yeah, it's, it's, it's interesting, huh?

But at the end of the day, like it really makes sense because you're focusing on now the right people.

Yep. So, okay, we've established that unsubscribes aren't always bad. How should marketers actually think about them? What's your opinion here?

Yeah, that's a good question. I, I think here you want to shift kind of your mindset from like subscribers to more so like an engaged audience.

Okay, I get that, but explain the difference for the audience. Sure.

Sure. I think at the end of the day, like marketers tend to think of like subscribers in the wrong sense, where in our minds, subscribers, it's just a number. 100,000 subscribers sounds fantastic. Sounds great. Sounds like you're crushing it, but that's on paper. Because what if only 10,000 of those people, right? 10% of the people actually ever open. That means you have a 10,000-person audience.

And 90,000 that's not, they're Right.

So instead of people obsessing over the kind of the total subscriber count, I think they need to just focus on the actual engaged audience size.

Yeah.

And if those unsubscribes help you get rid of unengaged people, that's kind of a win.

Exactly. Because you're going to trade vanity metrics for actual real measurable, you know, business moving metrics. Um, so, okay. With that, right, what do you think that people should track instead of just kind of the unsubscribe rate?

That's a great question. I think there's about 4 metrics you think about. So the first one I think about always that's pretty obvious is the engaged subscriber count. How many people opened or clicked in the last 60 days?

Right. So this is going to tell you your actual real audience size.

Exactly. And then we go to number 2, which is revenue per subscriber. How much revenue are you generating per person on your list?

Yeah. So in other words, this tells you if your list is actually valuable.

Yeah. And a smaller list with higher revenue per subscriber beats a bigger list with lower revenue per subscriber. Number 3, I would think, is this whole list growth versus churn growth. I think this is really important because the question you should ask is, are you acquiring more engaged subscribers than you are losing?

Right. And this boils down to like, are you growing your real audience, not just The total list.

Okay. And then I would think about number 4, which is like, are your opens and clicks rates going up or down over time? It's like a trend line.

Got it. So this is gonna help you understand if the content's in theory getting better or worse.

Right. And if your engagement go— is going up while some people are unsubscribing, I think you're doing great.

Yeah. And I think the big kind of mindset shift here is giving yourself permission to be, um, a bit more bold than you probably historically have been.

Yeah, in fact, I think that's, uh, you've got to be accepting of that, that not everyone's gonna like you. And that's kind of okay as a marketer.

Right. And I think actually, in fact, I'd go to the length of saying it's probably necessary. And if you're trying to please everyone, you're going to end up pleasing really no one in return.

Yeah. And you see this with some brands. Some brands are the best at being polarizing.

Do you have an example for this?

Yeah, dude. One of my favorite marketer brands out there is Liquid Death. They sell water. But they market it like an energy drink with this edgy, irrelevant, like, I mean, not irrelevant, irreverent branding, basically.

Yeah.

And look, it gets people going. Some people are just so diehard fanatic and other people just hate it. It really rubs them the wrong way.

Yeah. And, but the people who love it, they really love it. And they're kind of building this unique cult brand.

Right. Because they're not afraid to turn some people off.

Yeah. They know their audience and they're going all in serving that, all right, audience that they know buys from them.

Right. And they know that it could even mean losing people who don't get it, right?

Yeah. And my guess, I've never seen that inside their metrics before, but I'd bet their unsubscribe rate is higher than the average, but the revenue per subscriber is probably through the roof.

Right. Because they're not for everyone, they're for their people and their people actually really feel that. So cool. I think this was very helpful. Let's now close out with some practical guidelines. A quick question for you would be, when should you actually start worrying about unsubscribes?

Okay. I've got some like benchmark thoughts around this and I'll kind of go through it. So you've got that 0.0 to 0.01 or 0.1%. I would say you're probably playing it a little safe. Your content's quite boring. Then you've got that 0.2 to 0.5%. That's definitely the healthy range. You're being bold, but not alienating everybody. Once you start moving above that and you start getting to 0.5 to 0.7%, You're getting a little high, but it's okay if engagement is strong. That's the key. If engagement is strong, you don't want to see those metrics fall too much. And then we start getting to this 0.7%, 1%. You should be yellow flagging. Something's wrong here. And then if you're over 1%, that's tough. Definitely a red flag and something is terribly wrong.

Nice. And you'd look at these over time, right? Not just on a one-off single campaign, correct?

Yeah. It's always a trend line. If one campaign spikes to 0.8% because you took a controversial stance, that's absolutely fine. But you're averaging 0.8% for the month, you've got to diagnose that problem.

Yeah. So when should people actually worry here?

Okay. So you probably want to worry if your unsubscribe rate is creeping up month over month, your engagement rate is dropping at the same time. So you've got 2 things going the wrong way. You're getting a lot of spam complaints. I think that's even more important than even unsubscribe. And people are unsubscribing from your welcome series. I think that's probably the biggest key because that means that there's something wrong in your acquisition funnel.

Cool. Yeah, crystal clear about those kind of being all red flags.

Okay. Yeah. And that means something is generally structurally wrong, I would say.

And when should you actually celebrate unsubscribes?

Hey, quick 60-second break to shout out our title sponsor, Omnisend. If you don't know them, Omnisend is an all-in-one email and SMS platform built specifically for e-commerce. They're trusted by over 155,000 merchants with a 4.8 rating star on Shopify's marketplace with over 2,800+ Reviews. People love using them. Their support is incredible, responsive team, great help docs, and they actually show up when you need them. 3, look, everyone loves saving a buck. They've got great features and great pricing. Listen, I've heard this inside the community that someone actually dropped their bill by almost 50% and then included their SMS costs, which is absolutely wild. Another agency that we talked to shifted all his clients over when he discovered that he can save them 30 to 60%. Off of their actual monthly bill. And they're taking that money now reinvesting into ads. And that real money is going to come back into your pocket too, because you're helping them out or whatever it might be. With all this, I literally just helped Chase migrate his personal list to Omnisend not too long ago. It was super easy. They got team, they have an automated solution. It's really great. So if you're looking to scale your email and SMS game, check out omnisend.com/sendit. Tell them Chase and Jimmy sent you. Now back to your pod. Ooh, that's a good one. I would say I'm celebrating if your bold opinion campaign and some people self-selected out, that's cool. No problem. Or you did a list cleaning and you pruned dead weight and you're doing re-engagement kind of campaigns. No big deal. Your engagement subscribers count is growing even as your total subscriber is shrinking. So you're seeing it kind of increase engagement while you're losing that total list size number. And then of course, I would say the easiest one to measure is your revenue per subscriber is increasing.

Yeah, I think this really summarizes kind of the entirety of this episode is like, you need to be optimizing for quality, not just quantity.

That's the message here today.

Cool. I guess the last thing is like, if people take away one thing, maybe that, maybe one other thing, what should be the takeaway here?

All right, I got a hot take here. I would say unsubscribes are not the enemy. Boring is the enemy.

I like that.

Okay.

I think if you're too scared to be interesting, you fade into the background and it's worse than losing a few subscribers.

Yeah, right. And I think you'd rather be loved by some and hated by others than just ignored and really not cared about by anyone.

Polarization beats invisibility for sure. All right, can we do a quick recap here?

Sure.

I would say the unsubscribe paradox looks like this.

So 0.1% unsubscribe rate might mean boring content. Not great performance.

Okay. And then we've had the 0.5% unsubscribe, which is high engagement means you're being bold and building a real audience.

Right. So with that, you need to focus on engaged subscriber count and revenue per subscriber, not just the vanity metric of total list size, please.

And I would say give yourself the permission to be bold. Some people will unsubscribe no matter what, and that's just okay.

And you just need to worry if unsubscribes are trending up with kind of declining engagement. And if, you know, you're filtering out the right audience, it's okay if that goes up a little bit.

Yeah. And one last thing to remember, unsubscribes are not the enemy. Boring is the enemy. And with that, we're going to wrap up the unsubscribe paradox here today. So if this episode helps you here, I would definitely say share it with a founder or a marketer, someone who needs to hear this because really, The reality is, it's like, this is just not a metric that you've got to be thinking about. Thank you for listening to this pod. As always, make sure you check in the comments below. We've got some really cool new things out in there. The Vault is out. You should go check that out. You can get on our newsletter, obviously subscribe to this pod, like, share, and do all the good things. And make sure you leave a comment if you agree or disagree, or any topics that we might want to cover into the future. With that being said, thank you for listening to Send It, and we'll see you next time.

Bye.

Next week.

From the open to the click, they're the masters of the flow. Just watch your list grow and your leads turn to go. Did we retain you so far, or do we have to extend it? If you want results, you know you gotta send it. Yeah, you know you gotta send it. Yeah, you know you gotta send it. Yeah, you know you gotta send it. Send it.