Unsubscribe rate is the percentage of delivered emails that led to an unsubscribe. If 10,000 emails are delivered and 25 people unsubscribe, the rate is 0.25%. It is a direct signal of whether your emails match what people expected when they signed up, and how often they want to hear from you.
Some unsubscribes are healthy. People’s needs change: they bought the sofa, finished the course, moved city. An unsubscribe is far better than a spam complaint or someone silently ignoring you for years, because it removes an uninterested reader cleanly and protects your reputation. Making the exit easy is part of good practice, not a failure.
A spike is what deserves attention. Compare each campaign with your usual rate. A jump after increasing frequency points to fatigue. A jump on one campaign points to its content, subject line or audience. A rise among new subscribers suggests the sign-up offer attracted people who only wanted the coupon, or that the welcome emails don’t match the promise.
To reduce unnecessary unsubscribes, offer alternatives: fewer emails, specific topics or a pause. Segment so people get what they care about. Set expectations at sign-up about frequency and content. But never hide the unsubscribe link, make it hard to use or ignore requests, which simply moves people to the spam button.
A Bengaluru bookstore’s unsubscribe rate is usually 0.15%. After it starts sending daily emails during a sale, the rate jumps to 0.9%. For the next sale it sends daily emails only to people who clicked in the last month and adds a “send me only the weekly digest” option to its preference centre.
MailNesto campaign reports show unsubscribe rate for each send, the preference centre lets people choose topics or pause instead of leaving, and a Goodbye email recipe can follow up once when someone unsubscribes.