What Opt Out Statistics Can Tell You About Your Campaign February 13, 2020, | Posted by erin

Nobody likes receiving opt-out or unsubscribe requests; each one represents a prospect who--for the moment at least--is not going to convert. But learning more about the how, where, when, and why of opt-outs and unsubscribes can give you valuable insights about your email marketing campaign, as any of Site Impact’s experts can tell you. Whether you’re emailing too frequently, or your emails aren’t as mobile-friendly as you think, or even just that there’s a seasonal difference in what people want from your brand, it’s better to not look at unsubscribe requests as a failure but instead as a data point: feedback on how to improve your performance all around.

The basics

Of course, the question of what motivates opt-out requests is something that concerns the entire industry, so it’s not surprising that there are lots of reports and studies on the phenomenon in general. A study by OPTIZMO Technologies looked at trends through 2019 to take a broad portrait of opt-out behaviors across email marketing. What they found is that the majority of opt-out requests happened on smartphones: 74%, compared to 70% the year before--indicating that mobile engagement is only increasing in importance. Additionally, they found that Monday was the day that people tended to opt out of emails, with 16.2% of all unsubscribe requests being submitted on that day of the week. Fewer people on Android opted out compared to iOS users--52.9% for iOS, compared to 20.8% for Android, 20.7% for Windows, 5% for Mac OS users, and 0.6% for all other operating systems. Finally, late morning was the most popular time for opting out; night owls accounted for the lowest unsubscribe percentages in 2019, and the highest number of requests coming in from 11 a.m. to noon. These figures give a good starting point for understanding what your own data can indicate.

What unsubscribe request data can tell you

It’s no secret that all of us at Site Impact are keen on data and can find lots of ways to use it. Unsubscribe requests are a particularly rich area: they can provide you with a lot of data and feedback on your strategies and approach. Where your unsubscribe requests are coming from, for example, can tell you about whether your emails are consistently rendering properly on a given platform, beyond even what your internal testing does. Receiving a number of unsubscribe requests at once can tell you about a particular campaign. Consistently getting a high volume of opt-out submissions at a particular time of year can tell you about the seasonality of your products and services in ways you may not have previously considered. Drill deep into your data and look for patterns, and you will have a wealth of information to put to use in improving your campaigns.

Unsubscribe requests are a sometimes painful fact of life for email marketing professionals. Of course, there are some that will come through on even the most perfect email program, but by taking a deeper look into where the majority of the requests to opt out of your emails are coming from, you can get valuable insights into the performance of your campaigns and how to take things to the next level. Contact Site Impact to learn more about how we continually elevate the performance of all our clients’ campaigns.