Email Unsubscribes
How many people left your email list, day by day.
What it means
Email Unsubscribes is the count of people who opted out of email in the period, shown one row per day on the Email Subscriber Growth table. It's a raw count, not a rate — a send to 40,000 people and a send to 4,000 both land in the same column, so the number moves with how many emails you sent as well as how welcome they were.
Show the math
Formula and a worked example
What's counted. Every email opt-out recorded that day, whichever message prompted it — a campaign, a flow, or no recent send at all.
What it isn't. A percentage. To compare two periods fairly, read it against how much you sent and against the sign-ups in the same window.
Worked example. April: 900 unsubscribes against 2,400 sign-ups, so the list still grew by 1,500.
May is a heavy sending month: 1,600 unsubscribes against 1,100 sign-ups, so the list fell by 500. May's revenue was the better of the two. It was partly paid for with next quarter's audience.
It answers the question
What did this period's sending cost you in future reach? Every other email number reports what you earned; this one reports what you spent to earn it, in the one currency you can't buy back.
Why it matters
Unsubscribes are the only email figure that gets worse the harder you push the others. Send an extra campaign and revenue, click volume and email's share of sales all rise together — this column is the one that argues back, and it usually argues one send too late.
It's also easy to trace. Opt-outs are counted on the day they were recorded, so a spike usually sits within a day of the send that caused it. Line the column up against your send calendar and it becomes the cheapest way to find the format, the offer or the frequency your list won't accept.
What good looks like
There's no published band — it's a count, so its right size depends on your list and how often you send. Judge it two ways instead. Against sign-ups in the same window: a period where departures outrun arrivals needs an explanation, and two in a row need a change. Against your own per-campaign history: one send producing several times its usual number is the send to look at, whatever the monthly total says.
Zero is not the target. A month of almost no unsubscribes usually means you barely emailed anyone.
How to improve it
| Lever | What you do | Expect | How long | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fast Retire the send behind the spike | Trace the worst day back to the campaign that ran, and stop repeating that format | The next month's total falls without touching anything else | 2–4 weeks | That campaign was earning something. You're trading a known revenue row for list health you can't yet see. |
| Fast Cut frequency for the least engaged | Drop the segment that hasn't opened in months out of the broadcast calendar | Fewer opt-outs, and the sends that remain reach people who want them | 2–4 weeks | Campaign revenue falls with the reach, and some of those quiet profiles were slow buyers who'd have come back. |
| Slow Offer less email instead of none | Give people a way to choose fewer messages, or only the ones they care about, at the point they're about to leave | Some departures become downgrades | 1 quarter | Setup and upkeep, and a share of the people who'd have stayed on the full list will take the smaller option once you offer it. |
| Slow Send fewer, more relevant messages | Segment by what people bought and browsed, so each send has a reason to exist for the person receiving it | Opt-outs fall while revenue per send rises | 1 quarter | Smaller sends mean smaller headline revenue figures per campaign, which is uncomfortable before the trend catches up. |
Every lever costs something somewhere. The last column is the one to read twice.
Read it with
Departures on their own read as a failure. Against what the sending earned, they read as a price — and then you can decide whether it was worth paying.
Borrowing from next quarter
You sent harder and it worked, and part of the bill was your audience. A real result, funded by future reach.
Paying for nothing
People leaving and email earning less. The worst of the four, and delivery problems produce it as often as bad messages do.
Welcome and working
Email is earning a bigger share of the shop while fewer people leave. This is what relevance looks like in two numbers.
Too quiet
Few departures usually means few sends. A calm list that earns nothing isn't healthy, it's unused.
The count alone can't tell you whether the list is shrinking, because it says nothing about who arrived. 1,600 departures is fine against 3,000 sign-ups and serious against 1,100. The net figure settles it in one number.
These two together separate fatigue from friction. Opt-outs rising while revenue per recipient falls means the list has had enough of the frequency. Opt-outs rising while revenue per recipient holds means one campaign upset people and the rest is fine.
Common misreads
A period near zero almost always means you barely sent. People leaving after a campaign is the normal cost of using a list, and a list nobody uses earns nothing.
It's a count, not a rate. Doubling the number of sends, or emailing a segment twice the size, doubles this figure at exactly the same level of annoyance. Check volume first.
Someone who quietly stops opening never appears in this column, and still counts as a recipient every time you send — which quietly drags Email Rev. / RecipientEmail Rev. / RecipientWhat each contact is worth per send. down while looking like a healthy list.
Also called
Opt-outs · unsubscribes · list churn · email churn
See yoursYour daily email opt-outs for the period, next to the sign-ups that offset them.
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