Identify Dissatisfaction in Your Clients
The dissatisfaction rate can be calculated using statistics provided by your email delivery solution. It sets the number of clicks on the unsubscribe link against the overall number of clicks in a campaign.
A high rate indicates a high level of dissatisfaction among your subscribers. They didn’t like your content! If this is the case, you’ll often run into issues with deliverability (see Part 5) of your marketing campaign over the short or medium term.
Calculate the Dissatisfaction Rate
The dissatisfaction rate is very easy to calculate. All you need to do is take the total number of clicks on the unsubscribe link and divide that by the total number of clicks on your campaign (i.e., those on any links, including the unsubscribe link). Multiply the resulting number by 100 to get your dissatisfaction rate.
Dissatisfaction rate = unsubscribe clicks/total number of clicks
As a general rule:
A dissatisfaction rate < 20% (fewer than 2 of each 10 clicks were to unsubscribe): your subscribers are generally happy with your emails.
A dissatisfaction rate between 20% - 40% (2-4 clicks out of 10 were to unsubscribe): your subscribers are starting to get dissatisfied, but you still have time to react by analyzing your message content and the segment you used.
Dissatisfaction rate > 40% (over 4 in 10 clicks were to unsubscribe): very high levels of dissatisfaction, and you’re probably already seeing deliverability issues. Have you sent the right message to the right people? Was your database correctly optimized before use?
Use the Dissatisfaction Rate Wisely
You’re probably wondering why you should bother looking at this rate if everything’s going pretty well. The answer is that you can use this rate to avert disaster. It only takes one bad campaign to damage your reputation seriously, and that could take several weeks (or even months) to recover. So this can save you significant amounts of time and energy. 🙂
You can set certain limits based on your dissatisfaction rate. For example, if it’s sales season and you want to target more subscribers, you could say that you’ll stop widening your target beyond 30% dissatisfaction.
Let’s Recap!
Little known and rarely monitored, the dissatisfaction rate is a key indicator that deserves close attention – just like open and click rates.
Dissatisfaction is simple to calculate (especially if you can get the data straight from your email delivery tool), effective, and precise. Just keep calculator close by! 🙂
A dissatisfaction rate < 20% is a sign that your customers are happy.
You can use this rate to avert problems. If the dissatisfaction rate is between 20% - 40% you can adjust your campaign accordingly to avoid high dissatisfaction.
Next chapter, we’ll see what reports you should compile and update regularly to measure the performance of your email strategy.
