Hacker News Reader

Comment by paulie_a | Hacker News Reader

Do you track open rates that result in clicking unsubscribe?

I open a lot of email just to click that link

It's not generally a significant effect, unsubscribe rates tend to be well under 1%. Most people just ignore emails they don't want.

Don't forget the people that abuse the "mark as spam"-button as unsubscribe link. I saw that beahvior with non-techy users - it's often easier to find than the unsubscribe link and has the same effect to them.

This. The unsub rates I see tend to be measured in tenths of a percent or less.

I'd be curious in someone running an experiment that involved the unsubscribe link displayed as prominent as the marketing message.

N = 1, but I used to put it in the second sentence of my emails. The unsubscribe rate was still measured in basis points, although I had an unusually high quality list relative to e.g. most e-commerce shops.

i wish devs understood something: whatever pathological behavior you're participating in is just that: pathological. 99.99999999% of people just read emails and do nothing insidious/clever/nefarious. there are literally like 5 people like you and 100,000 people just reading the email and either clicking or not clicking, buying or not buying, etc.

Unsubscribing from spam is now considered pathological?. Damn, marketing on the internet has really gone overboard

you're being facetious so i'm going to quote the person running the email campaign that responds directly:

>It's not generally a significant effect, unsubscribe rates tend to be well under 1%. Most people just ignore emails they don't want.

under %1 is almost by definition "pathological"

Thank you for saying this. Agree 1000%

Reply on news.ycombinator.com