Net Email Subscribers
Whether your email list grew or shrank this period.
What it means
Net Email Subscribers is new sign-ups minus unsubscribes across the period you've selected. It's a direction, not a size — positive means the list got bigger, and it can go negative. The total number of people on the list is a separate figure, Email Subscribers.
Show the math
Formula and a worked example
New sign-ups is everyone who joined in the period, from every source — pop-up, checkout, back-in-stock. Unsubscribes is everyone who opted out in the same window.
Worked example. April brings 2,400 sign-ups and 900 unsubscribes. Net Email Subscribers = +1,500.
May is a heavy sending month: 1,100 sign-ups, 1,600 unsubscribes, so −500. Revenue was up in May. The list paid for it, and nothing on the revenue card says so.
It answers the question
Is the audience you sell to getting bigger or smaller? Positive means next quarter has more people to sell to; negative means this quarter's revenue came out of next quarter's list.
Why it matters
It's the door count, not the till. Every other Klaviyo number sits on top of this one, and a shrinking list can hide under strong revenue for months — CRM RevenueCRM RevenueIncome from an audience you already own. holds up while you send harder to fewer people, right up until it doesn't.
It's also the cleanest read you get on whether your sending is welcome. Unsubscribes spike on the exact campaign that annoyed people, and a period that turns negative while traffic held steady is a frequency problem, not a demand one.
What good looks like
There's no universal target — this is a count, so a store doing 500 orders a month and one doing 50,000 can't share a number. Judge it against your own recent periods and against your traffic, since net additions should roughly track sessions when capture is working. The line that matters is zero: one negative period wants an explanation, two in a row want a change.
How to improve it
| Lever | What you do | Expect | How long | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fast Fix the sign-up unit before you fix the emails | Test the offer and the placement — a clear reason to join, shown on the pages people actually land on | Sign-ups up 20–40% within a fortnight | 1–2 weeks | A bigger discount to join comes off every first order, and pulls Gross Margin down as the list grows. |
| Fast Retire the send that drives the unsubscribes | Find the campaign with the worst unsubscribe count and stop repeating that format | Net figure improves without touching capture | 2–4 weeks | That campaign was earning something. You're trading a known revenue row for list health you can't see yet. |
| Slow Give a reason to join that isn't a discount | Early access, restock alerts, sizing help — things a buyer wants and a deal-hunter doesn't | Slower growth, subscribers who stay and open | 1 quarter | Capture rate drops against a straight percentage off, so the number gets worse before the quality of it gets better. |
| Slow Capture at checkout and after delivery | Ask buyers to opt in during checkout and in the post-purchase message | Steady net additions that convert better than pop-up names | 6–8 weeks | One more thing in the checkout flow. Watch conversion on the step you add it to before you keep it. |
Every lever costs something somewhere. The last column is the one to read twice.
Read it with
List direction on its own is just a count. Against email's share of revenue, it tells you whether the channel is being built or spent.
Growing and earning
New names arriving and email taking a bigger slice of the shop. The two reinforce each other, and this is the only combination that keeps working next year.
Spending the list
Email's share is rising because you're asking more of a shrinking audience. It's a real result borrowed from a future quarter.
Filling the top
Plenty of new subscribers and none of them buying yet. Expect a lag after a capture push; worry if it runs a full quarter.
Shrinking at both ends
Fewer people and less revenue from them. Deliverability trouble produces this exact pattern, so rule it out before you rewrite anything.
Growth next to per-head value separates real gain from dilution. Adding names while per-recipient revenue holds means the new people are as good as the old ones. Adding names while it falls means a discount pop-up is collecting people who wanted the code, not the shop.
This pair shows whether sign-ups become buyers. Strong net additions while the New Customer share stays flat means people are joining the list and never ordering, which points at the welcome flow rather than at capture. Growing both means the list is a real acquisition channel.
Common misreads
A net gain built on a 20%-off pop-up can be full of people who took the code, ordered once and never opened again. Read per-recipient revenue beside it before you call it growth.
Near-zero unsubscribes usually means you barely send. People leaving after a campaign is normal, and healthier than a list full of profiles that quietly ignore you and drag your inbox placement down.
It's the change, not the total — Email Subscribers is the total. A store with 80,000 subscribers and a store with 3,000 can both show +1,500, and they're in completely different positions.
Also called
Net list growth · net new subscribers · net adds
See yoursSign-ups against unsubscribes for the period, so you can see which way the list moved and when.
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