How to Reduce Unsubscribe Rate and What a Good One Is

What Is an Unsubscribe Rate?

Unsubscribe rate is the percentage of recipients who opt out of your emails after receiving a campaign. To calculate, use the unsubscribe rate formula:

Unsubscribe rate is a key email marketing metric. A high unsubscribe rate isn’t just about ego (no marketer likes rejection).

🔔 It’s a warning bell.

Every time someone unsubscribes, your sender reputation takes a hit. Ignoring it could see your emails ending up in spam folders instead of inboxes.

Brands with high unsubscribe rates get flagged by inbox providers, which makes it harder for your future emails to be delivered. Terrible unsubscribe rates can torpedo months of nurturing and erode any sense of loyalty you’ve built with your audience.

Ignore it, and your list will quietly wither away. It’s a stat you can’t afford to skip.

Monitor your unsubscribe rate as if your company’s survival depends on it. Because, digitally speaking, it does.

What Is a Good Unsubscribe Rate?

You might be wondering: What is the gold standard for unsubscribe rates?

Typically, you’re looking at around 0.1% to 0.3%, depending on the industry you’re in. These aren’t vanity numbers; they’re industry benchmarks. If you’re sitting in that zone, cheers to you! Your emails are doing alright.

But don’t crack open the champagne just yet; every email list comes with some churn. That’s something you can’t avoid, and not all churn is bad (we’ll get to that next).

But if you’re seeing your unsubscribe rate creep towards 0.5%, consider this a warning sign. If you cross 1%, you’re in the danger zone.

Time to take action (not just notes). You’ll need to shake things up and start digging into what’s causing your readers to bail.

The Context Matters

Benchmarks are only helpful if you also consider your context.

For example, you might see a temporary spike during a major product launch, a controversial campaign, or after importing new subscribers (especially if those emails weren’t thoroughly validated). That’s normal.

What isn’t normal is a consistently high unsubscribe rate across campaigns—that’s a systemic problem.

What Is a High Unsubscribe Rate and What’s Causing It?

A high unsubscribe rate is typically defined as anything above 0.5% to 1%. That may not sound like much, but at scale, each fraction of a percentage point can represent hundreds or thousands of lost subscribers over time.

Here are the usual reasons people jump ship:

A high unsubscribe rate is your audience telling you—loud and clear—that your emails are no longer cutting it, unfortunately. Time to face the music and get to the root of the problem.

How to Reduce Unsubscribe Rate (And Grow Engagement)

Alright, time to roll up your sleeves. Reducing your unsubscribe rate takes strategy. Here’s where to start:

1. Validate Email Addresses

Start at signup. Don’t build a list on a foundation of sand. Invalid or low-quality email addresses ruin engagement and inflate your unsubscribe rate from the very beginning.

Use an email verification tool like VerifiedEmail to catch typos, fake accounts, and role-based emails (info@, sales@) before they land on your list.

Here’s how Verified Email works:

• Instantly verifies email addresses at point of capture or before sending a campaign
• Removes invalid, disposable, and low-quality contacts before they drain your metrics
• Helps you maintain a healthy sender reputation, so more emails land in the inbox

List validation isn’t just one-and-done. Build it into your email acquisition process.

Check if your email is valid with VerifiedEmail.

Verify

2. Keep Your List Fresh

Maintain great list hygiene. Automate re-engagement campaigns for subscribers who’ve gone AWOL (aka users who haven’t opened or clicked in the last 3-6 months.) Give people clear options to tweak what they get and how often they get it. Maybe you can offer the choice of managing their preferences or pausing emails instead of unsubscribing permanently.

Key actions include:

• Set up re-engagement campaigns for inactive subscribers.
• Make it painless to update preferences (frequency, content type).
• Honor unsubscribe requests instantly.

3. Segment and Personalize

Sending the same email to everyone? Nah, that’s amateur hour.

Segmentation is your secret weapon. Stop treating your list as a single mass. Use data (interests, behaviors, demographics) to send targeted, personalized content.

Not only does this reduce unsubscribe rates, but it also boosts email engagement and other metrics that matter.

A couple of hot tips:

• Dynamic content blocks can personalize sections of your emails for different audiences.
• Start by segmenting based on engagement level, location, purchase history, or stated interests.

4. Nail the Timing

Set and meet clear expectations at signup about how often you’ll send emails. Then, ask for feedback. Maybe your audience wants monthly recaps, not weekly blasts.

Listen, adapt, and make cadence part of your ongoing optimization. No point guessing when you’ve got thousands of contacts happy to tell you what they think.

5. Make Every Email Worth It

Every email should be worth opening. If it’s not, don’t send it.

Establish trust with your subscribers by delivering value in each email. Give your readers a reason to stay by offering true value in every campaign. Educational content, insider tips, and exclusive offers earn loyalty.

6. Make Unsubscribing Easy

This sounds counterintuitive, but forced retention kills email deliverability. Making unsubscribing hard is dodgy and only ups your spam complaints.

Keep it simple, and you’re more likely to keep your reputation intact. A clear, easy-to-find unsubscribe link shows you respect your audience. Plus, hiding the unsubscribe button increases spam complaints, which do far more damage than an honest unsubscribe.

7. Monitor and Optimize

Test everything. Track your unsubscribe rate for each campaign, compare content formats, and A/B test everything from send times to subject lines.

Your unsubscribe rate is just one piece of the puzzle. Use it to figure out what’s working and what’s not. Data-driven adjustments are how you find and keep your ideal subscribers, and eventually increase your ROI.

How to Calculate Unsubscribe Rate Regularly

All your optimization means nothing if you don’t track the right numbers. Pull data directly from your email service provider after every send. Combine this with analytics platforms for deeper insights into trends over time.

Analyze unsubscribe rates campaign by campaign. Are certain types of content triggering more unsubscribed? Did adding new segments help or hurt? Use these insights to double down on what works.

And remember, unsubscribe rate—although a key metric—is only a piece of the puzzle. Analyze this metric alongside other figures to get the big picture on your campaign’s performance.

Keep an Eye on Your Email Health

Unsubscribe rate is more than a vanity metric. It’s a flashing neon sign telling you how people feel about your emails. If your emails consistently drive people away, more sends won’t fix the issue.

What you need is a sharp strategy and tools to keep your list healthy and happy. Revisit your email campaigns and practices, validate your data with tools like VerifiedEmail, focus on list hygiene, and give your audience exactly what they want.

Retention isn’t a trick. It’s the result of relentlessly earning your subscribers’ attention and trust.