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Metrics & Analytics

Churn Rate

The percentage of subscribers who leave your email list over a given period through unsubscribes or inactivity.

Definition

Churn rate in email marketing measures the percentage of subscribers who leave your list over a specific time period. It includes both active churn (unsubscribes, spam complaints) and passive churn (bounced emails, inactive addresses removed). Healthy list growth requires new subscriptions to outpace churn.

Why It Matters

High churn erodes your audience and the value of your list-building efforts. Understanding churn helps you identify problems with content relevance, send frequency, or subscriber expectations. Reducing churn is often more cost-effective than acquiring new subscribers.

How It Works

Calculate churn by dividing the number of subscribers lost during a period by the starting list size. Track separately by cause: unsubscribes, bounces, complaints, and manual removals. Monthly churn rates of 0.2-0.5% are typical; higher rates signal issues.

Best Practices

  • 1Track churn rate monthly and by campaign to spot trends
  • 2Survey unsubscribers to understand why they are leaving
  • 3Segment by engagement to identify at-risk subscribers early
  • 4Balance list hygiene with engagement to manage passive churn

Frequently Asked Questions

Monthly churn rates of 0.2-0.5% are healthy. Above 1% suggests problems with content relevance or frequency. Some churn is normal and even healthy - disengaged subscribers hurt your metrics.

Set proper expectations at signup, send relevant personalized content, optimize frequency, make unsubscribing easy (to avoid spam complaints), and run re-engagement campaigns for inactive subscribers.