Understanding Email List Churn and Decay Part 1: Churn
For most people, the word “churn” immediately brings old-timey butter making to mind. And while the work involved in a strong email program can often feel as difficult as churning butter for hours, the result is less satisfying for email. Churning butter results in a delicious creamy topping for a roll or an important ingredient for cookies (and not the website kind of cookie!) but churn in your email list can lead to less engagement, fewer donations and, as you will learn in part two of this series, decay.
What is Email List Churn?
Email list churn is essentially the rate at which subscribers come and go from your email list. It’s usually measured by looking at the percentage of emails that are removed from a list over a given period of time. In essence, it’s a measure of how often people unsubscribe from an email list or delete emails without opening them—essentially ignoring them in some way. Typically for-profits churn about 30% of their email list per year, nonprofits slightly less.
Typical Metrics for List Churn
The most common metric used to measure marketing churn is called “monthly active users” (MAU). MAU measures the percentage of subscribers who are actively engaging with emails each month. For instance, if 1,000 subscribers open emails each month but 200 unsubscribe or delete them without opening them, then MAU would be 800 (1,000 – 200 = 800). This number tells you how many subscribers are actively engaging with emails each month. If this number of MAU remains the same, you are simply churning existing audience members, essentially replacing one MAU with another but not growing your list.
Is There Anything Positive About Email List Churn?
Yes! Believe it or not, marketing list churn can be beneficial in some ways. It allows you to identify which parts of your email campaigns need improvement and helps you weed out inactive subscribers who aren't interested in what you have to say. As a result, it can help ensure that those who remain on your email list are actually engaged and interested in what you have to offer, making it easier for you to generate leads and donations from those people. In some ways it can be argued that if you have NO list churn you have a stagnant list. For a membership organization, such as most public media stations, you obviously want list growth, but also a slight degree of churn, replacing older subscribers with new subscribers. As new folks arrive on your list, you have an opportunity to convert them to donors. But once you have skimmed the cream off the top, converting those most likely to convert, the maximum bang for your buck would likely be new subscribers. Technically, however that would be churn.
The desire for a small degree of churn does, however, have some caveats. Typically, you would want a slight bit of churn on your nonmember list, as you are aiming for revenue and conversions. Churn on your member list is more troubling. Churn also can be a net negative for your mission-oriented emails—those not concerned with revenue but rather encouraging people to tune in to PBS or NPR programs, share information on community events and such. In those cases, churn might tell you that folks are NOT finding that information useful, and since the purpose of the mission emails is simply TO INFORM, it is a larger concern.
What Is Dangerous About Email List Churn?
While there can be some positives associated with email list churn, it can lead to problems as well. One major issue is that high levels of churn can reduce engagement rates across all campaigns, as fewer people are receiving messages overall. Another problem is that high churn rates can negatively impact deliverability, as ISPs may begin looking at the sender's reputation more closely if they detect high levels of unsubscribes/deletions from their messages. Both these issues will ultimately lead to decay, which we will explore in part two.
What Can You Do to Reduce Email Marketing List Churn?
There are several things you can do to reduce marketing churn rates, including segmenting your lists based on interests/demographics so that only relevant messages are sent; using automated campaigns such as welcome series or re-engagement emails; providing incentives for people to stay subscribed (think event discounts); and creating content that resonates with readers so they actually want to open and read emails from your organization instead of deleting them immediately upon receiving them.
List churn is an important metric for nonprofits because it tells us how many people are actively engaging with our emails each month and provides insight into areas in which we might need improvement in our messaging strategies or content offerings. Fortunately, there are several steps we can take to reduce our marketing list churn such as segmenting our lists based on interests/demographics, using automated campaigns, providing incentives and creating content that resonates with readers so they don't feel compelled to delete our messages without opening them first. By taking these steps, we can ensure that we maximize engagement with our emails while reducing unnecessary churn rates!