No email marketer wants to see an unsubscribe. And even with providing post-unsubscribe check boxes to gather user feedback, motivations aren't always clear.
How concerned should retailers be with email unsubscribers?
A new study from retail marketing platform Bluecore found that a majority of unsubscribers (77%) never bought anything from a merchant for which they signed up for emails. Far fewer were one-time buyers (13%) or multi-time buyers (10%).
All retail verticals aren't equal, though. Jewelry, health and beauty and food and beverage retailers all have a high proportion of unsubscribes from nonbuyers, while B2B retailers have the highest number of unsubscribes from multi-time buyers (44.3%) compared with nonbuyers (53.6%). Toys and gifts retailers had the highest amount of one-time buyers unsubscribing (31.8%).
When compared with email recipients generally, 55% were nonbuyers, 26% one-time buyers and 19% multi-time buyers. The overindexing of unsubscribers who never bought anything means the impact on sales is softened, but it also reflects lost revenues potential.
It's hard to quantify lost opportunities for engagement, brand awareness and obtaining customer data. But according to Bluecore, a retailer with an average order value of $50 loses $17.92 in revenues for each unsubscriber.
Looking at types of emails, post-purchase messages trigger the most unsubscribes (0.40%), roughly double the closest competitor, search abandonment emails (0.21%). This implies that shoppers often subscribe to a retailer's email for a one-time discount then lose interest in further messages.