Latest / The Email Marketing Podcast with Fexingo: Newsletters, Open Rates, and Subscriber Growth / Why Email List Churn Is Actually a Healthy Growth Signal
Transcript
- Lucas: Luna, I want to talk about something that marketers usually treat as a failure, but I think is actually one of the healthiest signals you can get from your email list. Luna: Let me guess — you're going to say list churn, right? Lucas: Exactly. We've done episodes on list cleaning and sunset policies, but I want to focus specifically on churn as a growth signal. Because I keep seeing people panic when their unsubscribe rate ticks up, when in many cases, that's exactly what should be happening. Luna: It's counterintuitive. I think a lot of marketers have this deep-seated fear that losing subscribers means their content is failing. Lucas: Right, and that fear is understandable when you're measured on list size. But here's the thing — a list that never loses subscribers is often a list that isn't being honest with itself. Let me give you a concrete example. There's a B2B newsletter I follow — I won't name it because they shared this in a private community — they had about 50,000 subscribers and were seeing open rates around 22 percent. That's decent for B2B, but they decided to run a re-engagement campaign. They sent a blunt email saying, 'If you haven't opened in six months, we'll remove you unless you click this link.' They lost about 15,000 subscribers in one week. Luna: Ouch. That's 30 percent of their list gone. I bet leadership was nervous. Lucas: They were. But within three months, their open rates climbed to 38 percent, and click-through rates nearly doubled. Their total engagement — the number of people actually clicking — stayed roughly the same, because the dead weight was gone. So their deliverability improved, their sender reputation improved, and the emails that remained were reaching people who actually wanted them. Luna: So the churn wasn't a loss of audience — it was a correction. The list was bloated with people who had never really opted in, or had lost interest. Lucas: Exactly. And that's the key distinction. There's 'bad churn' — when you're driving away people who were truly engaged, usually because of frequency issues or irrelevant content — and 'good churn', which is just clearing out the noise. The problem is that most email platforms report churn as one number, so you can't tell which kind you're experiencing unless you look at the context. Luna: So how do you distinguish between the two? What metrics should someone track? Lucas: I think there are three. First, look at churn alongside engagement rates. If your list shrinks but open rates go up, that's good churn. If both go down, you have a content or frequency problem. Second, look at the source of the churn. Are people unsubscribing from your welcome sequence? That could indicate a mismatch between what you promised and what you deliver. Third, look at the click to open rate — if that stays stable while open rates rise, you're losing the less engaged, which is ideal. Luna: I remember reading about a study from Mailchimp a few years ago — they analyzed billions of emails and found that lists with higher churn rates actually had higher long-term engagement. The ones with near-zero churn were often stale lists with very low activity. Lucas: That's the data point I was thinking of. It's the 'churn fatigue' myth — the idea that churn is inherently bad. But in reality, a healthy list should have a churn rate that reflects the natural lifecycle of your audience. If you're a career newsletter, people get jobs and unsubscribe. That's fine. If you're a daily deals site, people unsubscribe when they're done shopping. That's fine too. The issue is when you're holding onto subscribers who haven't engaged in months, because that drags down your deliverability for everyone. Luna: And it's not just deliverability — it's also about your sender reputation with ISPs. If you keep mailing to people who never open, you start looking like a spammer. Lucas: Exactly. That's the technical angle. But let's talk about the strategic one. I think churn can also be a signal that your list is growing from the right channels. For example, if you're getting subscribers from a high-intent source like a webinar or a lead magnet, those subscribers tend to churn less. But if you're buying traffic or using aggressive pop-ups, you get a lot of unengaged sign-ups that will churn quickly. So a high churn rate might just mean you need to clean up your acquisition channels, not your content. Luna: That's a good point. I've noticed that some brands actually use churn as a leading indicator. If they see a spike in unsubscribes after a particular campaign, they know that campaign attracted the wrong audience or set the wrong expectation. Lucas: Right. And that feedback loop is incredibly valuable. If you're not seeing any churn, you might be too cautious — you're not testing bold subject lines, not trying different offers, not segmenting aggressively. Because the safest email is one that offends nobody, but it also excites nobody. So a little churn can be a sign that you're actually doing something interesting. Luna: Let's talk about benchmarks. What's a 'healthy' churn rate? I know it varies by industry, but give us a range. Lucas: For most email lists, a monthly churn rate of 1 to 3 percent is normal. That means you lose 1 to 3 percent of your list every month to unsubscribes and hard bounces. For transactional or high-frequency sends, it can be higher. For very targeted B2B lists, it might be lower. But if you're below 0.5 percent monthly churn, I'd be suspicious — it might mean you're not cleaning your list at all, or your unsubscribe process is too hidden, which actually hurts your deliverability. Luna: And what about annual churn? Because a 2 percent monthly churn adds up to about 22 percent annual churn, which means you need to grow at least that much just to stay flat. Lucas: Exactly. And that's why list growth is so important. But I think the real metric to watch is 'net engaged subscribers' — the number of people who have opened or clicked in the last 90 days. If that number is growing, you're in good shape, even if your total list size is shrinking. Because those are the people who actually see your emails and take action. Luna: Okay, but here's the practical question: how often should you actively prune your list? We've talked about sunset policies before, but what's the cadence? Lucas: I recommend a quarterly review for most senders. Set a threshold — say, no opens or clicks in 90 days — and send a re-engagement sequence. If they don't respond, remove them. That's a healthy rhythm. For high-volume senders, you might do it monthly. But the key is to automate it. You don't want to be manually combing through lists. Luna: And I think one thing that's often overlooked is that churn isn't just about unsubscribes — it's also about email address decay. People change jobs, change email providers, abandon accounts. That's a natural churn that you can't control. Lucas: Absolutely. The average email list decays by about 22.5 percent per year, according to some industry studies. So even if nobody unsubscribes, you'll lose over a fifth of your list annually just to address changes. That's why list cleaning isn't optional — it's maintenance. Luna: So if someone is listening and thinking, 'My churn rate just spiked, I should fix my content,' what would you say? Lucas: I'd say look deeper before panicking. Check if the spike is concentrated in a specific segment — maybe a new welcome series is causing people to self-select out early, which is actually good. Check if your open rates are stable or improving. And check if the churn is coming from a particular source — maybe a recent co-registration deal brought in low-quality subscribers. The number itself is meaningless without context. Luna: I think that's the takeaway: churn is data, not a verdict. You have to interpret it. Lucas: Exactly. And honestly, if these kinds of marketing conversations have sparked something you've actually used in your own work, that's exactly why we keep doing this show. Listener support is what keeps it ad-free and focused on real tactics, not sponsored fluff. If you've gotten value from episodes like this one, you can support the show at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. It's a small gesture that helps us keep the conversation going without any outside pressure. Luna: Yeah, and we really mean that. Every bit of support goes directly into making the show better — better research, better guests, better insights. It's genuinely appreciated. Lucas: So back to churn for a minute — I want to end with one more example. There's a well-known case from a few years ago: the email team at BuzzFeed News. They had a massive list, but engagement was declining. They did a huge re-engagement campaign and removed over a million subscribers. Their list size dropped by about 40 percent, but their open rates went from the low teens to over 30 percent. And their click-through rates tripled. That's the power of embracing churn. Luna: It takes guts to do that, especially when you're being measured on top-line numbers. But the long-term payoff is huge. Lucas: It does. And I think that's the lesson: don't be afraid of the unsubscribe button. It's your list's immune system. Let it work. Luna: Great advice. I think that's a solid place to wrap up.