How To Improve Engagement & Reduce Unsubscribe Rates

The average email unsubscribe rate can vary according to many factors. It can also be different across industries and organisations, whether it is internal or external communication and content relevance.  So it isn’t always relevant to benchmark your unsubscribe rate against others, or if you do, make sure it is as close as you can get as a like for like match.

That being said, what is the average benchmark unsubscribe rate? 

The average unsubscribe rate for email marketing typically falls between 0.1% and 0.5%. This range serves as a benchmark unsubscribe rate to evaluate the effectiveness of your email campaigns.

A rate within this range is generally considered healthy. If your average unsubscribe rate email exceeds this benchmark unsubscribe rate, it may signal a need to reassess the following to achieve a good unsubscribe rate:

• Email marketing strategy
• Content
• Frequency 
• Email Deliverability
• The way you collect subscriptions 
• Unsubscribe Process
• Subscription Preference Centre field and UI
• Segmentation and Targeting effort
• One-click unsubscribe policy

So, the burning question, how to reduce unsubscribe rate?

How to reduce unsubscribe rate? This is one of the most common questions we are asked at Swift Digital and what a good question it is. Reducing your unsubscribe rate requires tactics and strategy and won’t happen overnight. We have outlined seven of the best ways to reduce your unsubscribe rate in your emails and how you can implement them today.

It’s content that grabs and holds attention, so it’s content that is the real glue of your brand’s relationship with its contacts will ensure your average unsubscribe rate remains low.

You can use dynamic content parameters to set rules for which bits of content will appear for which targeted subscribers. You can use past behaviour on communications, events, etc – to target special groups with content particularly unique to them.

Collect information on the topics that each contact wants to receive at the subscription stage (in your subscription form) in order to sort them into Mail Groups for more relevant content targeting and see your email marketing unsubscribe rate drop.

Not everyone who clicks the unsubscribe button wants to fully unsubscribe from all communications. Some contacts who unsubscribe are actually looking to receive less emails, or tweak what communications they receive

But these reasons are addressable. Instead of using a standard unsubscription form, opt for a Preference Center to ensure your average email unsubscribe rate remains healthy.

A Preference Center gives your subscribers a chance to tweak the types of communications they’d like to receive. They can opt to receive communications that are relevant to them and remove subscriptions for campaigns that they’d not like to see in their inboxes.  

A Preference Center will catch subscribers who do value some of your communications but are not interested in some of your other content, in turn lowering your average email unsubscribe rate. 

Instead of only having two choices: to remain subscribed, or to unsubscribe – these contacts will likely remain subscribed when they get the opportunity to customise their subscription to your organisation’s emails.

Introduce a preference centre as part of your overall communications strategy and you will start to see a good unsubscribe rate.

Improve engagement with your emails by designing them in a journey format, rather than just blasting out disjointed emails. 

Email campaign journey ideas include: 

– Welcome journeys (where new subscribers are welcomed and are sent emails to catch them up on information, updates, deals etc.)

– VIP customer journeys (where already converted customers are sent special discounts, deals, and offers)

– Behaviour-triggered journeys (where contacts receive emails according to how they interacted with previous campaigns, events, or website landing pages)

Your contacts will receive content that makes sense for them, and they will naturally build familiarity with your brand helping to foster an overall good unsubscribe rate, one that sits below the average unsubscribe rate.

Journeys help ensure that targeted recipients don’t get the same email in different formats and are treated personably.

If you have low engagement and high unsubscribe rates, then you probably don’t know your audience well enough and more work needs to be done to reduce that email marketing unsubscribe rate. 

Your data can help you build accurate profiles of your audience, enabling you to create audience segmentation into target groups and gain their attention and respect.

Use Engagement Scoring to score your contacts based on their engagement with your communications, and segment them based on their behaviour so that you can target them with super-focused relevant content.

Check out which subject line garners the most opens, and which copy garners the most click-throughs. All of this data is invaluable and can be used directly to inform your next campaign’s strategy and help to reduce your average unsubscribe rate in your emails and communications. 

This is probably the most effective way of reducing your average email unsubscribe rate. Think quality over quantity.  Focus more of your resources and time on getting your campaigns right, and less on pumping out as much content as possible. 

CIO reports that one of the most frequently cited reasons for email unsubscriptions is ‘receiving emails too often’.  An organisation with a good unsubscribe rate will focus on the content and journey of their campaigns, and less on publishing as often as possible. 

Email list hygiene, or regularly cleaning your email subscriber list, ensures that the data to which you send emails is healthy and clean. 

To maintain a good unsubscribe rate, you should actively review your subscribers at least every quarter to remove bounced email addresses, unengaged subscribers, and incorrect email addresses. This will helo you avoid spam traps and maintain healthy email deliverability. 

Sometimes list hygiene methods include reactivation campaigns to ensure your subscribers still want to hear from you, an example of these is ‘Sunset Campaigns’. These types of subscriber campaigns can help reduce email marketing unsubscribe rate.

Experiment with different subject lines, content, and email designs to see what resonates best with your audience and benchmark unsubscribe rates of each A/B test.  

Make sure you segment your audience for your testing so each segment receives the opposite tests, but ensure your audience is similar for both segments to make it a fairer test. Define your goals and make sure you only test one variable at a time to ensure a fair test. 

Continuous improvement through testing different A/B attributes can help reduce your emails’ average unsubscribe rate. Some examples of good A/B testing to help reduce your email marketing unsubscribe rate include:

• Subject line tests
• .Call to action button testing
• Email layout testing
• Sending time testing
• Unsubscribe button testing

Actioning these items in your communications will help to reduce unsubscribe rate in your emails. This won’t happen overnight, but you will likely see some improvement and be on the way to achieving a good unsubscribe rate.

Want to create exciting email marketing campaigns that keep your audience subscribed and hungry for more?

Swift Digital’s digital marketing platform with marketing automation can help you craft phenomenal communications without even breaking a sweat!

With our tools, your consumers will be more inclined to stay subscribed and say yes to more of your brilliant marketing creations!

Swift Digital’s templates help you effortlessly create stunning emails and events communications using our drag-and-drop email and event builder.

You can raise engagement with embedded images, videos, polls, article feedback, and emojis and schedule messages to send at the right time.

Government departments’ unique marketing requirements are covered with Swift Digital, and full compliance with all anti-spam and privacy laws is guaranteed. Swift Digital is also ISO 27001 certified.

Find out why we’re the Australian government department’s top choice for their professional communications and events.

To find out how your business can get the best out of Swift Digital’s platform, contact our team today.

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