A client in the B2B consulting area recently asked me what a “typical” unsubscribe rate is for an email or autoresponder list. Here’s how I replied (paraphrased of course — I don’t actually speak in numbered points).

1. Unsubscribe rates can vary enormously. The main factor that influences your unsubscribe rate is the VALUE you offer your list on an ongoing basis. There is a delicate balance between education, value and selling - and the general rule is it’s much more effective to demonstrate value first before selling.

2. You’ll notice I didn’t actually answer the question above ;). If I had to give a figure, I would say that typical unsubscribe rates for “Special Report/White Paper + followup” sequences are in the 5% to 30% range.

3. Your unsubscribe rate is cumulative — it will tend to climb over time so in order to maintain a robust list size, you have to add new members faster than they unsubscribe.

4. Some messages in your autoresponder series will trigger many more unsubscribes than others. If you know which message(s) are the main culprits, you can edit accordingly. Take a look at the Followup Status - Unsubscribed report from within the Aweber autoresponder system (highly recommended, by the way):

As you can see, message 7 is the main offender — responsible for a massive proportion of unsubscribes!

A quick check of message 7 confirmed that the subject matter switched from good information and education to a “buy now” pitch, with some fairly clear-cut “disqualification” criteria. In other words, “buy now or go away”. Many subscribers obviously “took the hint” and hit the “unsubscribe” button.

Should you really care if list subscribers unsubscribe?

Making your unsubcribe rate as low as possible is NOT optimal in most circumstances. If your unsubscribe rate is very low, that MAY indicate your offers are too weak or you are not qualifying clients and/or setting appropriate buying criteria.

Autoresponder series are not only a powerful education tool but also a powerful QUALIFCICATION tool. Let me give you an example:

One of our clients is involved in property development project management in Brisbane. Their marketing had been quite effective at generating enquires, but of a very low quality. The result was that the sales team was forced to pick through the pile of low-quality leads to get to the hot prospects.

They solved this problem by publishing a targeted Special Report on their website, backed up by a series of autoresponders, educating prospective property investors about new property development options and how to put a deal together. One of the main purposes of the sequence is to DIS-qualify “non-buyers” BEFORE they call and start consuming salespeoples’ time like hyper-absorbant sponges.

So in this case, a certain number of unsubscribes from the list are a good thing.

Although not all unsubscribe patterns are as pronounced as the one in the image above, if you at least know how users are responding to each stage of your lead generation process, you can test new approaches to get improved results within only a few iterations.

Here’s to YOUR success!

Will Autoresponder Marketer

P.S. I highly endorse the Aweber Autoresponder system because of it’s very reasonable cost and raft of useful features, including the ability to SPLIT TEST multiple emails to the same list and track the results — that’s instant leverage.