Just realized my email list was bleeding subscribers because of a subject line mistake

I was seeing around 50 unsubscribes a week and couldn't figure out why. Turns out I was putting the word 'free' in too many subject lines and it triggered spam filters on Gmail. After 3 months of testing, I swapped to using words like 'complimentary' and 'no cost' and my unsubscribe rate dropped to 12 a week. Has anyone else run into weird trigger words like that in their email campaigns?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_anthony26d ago

Respectfully, I see it differently. 50 unsubscribes a week on a list of 5,000 people means you're losing over 1,000 subscribers a year just from that one issue. That's a lot of potential customers walking out the door who you already had a relationship with. I think it's smart to notice a pattern like that and dig into the cause rather than just shrugging it off. The spam filter problem is real too - I've seen deliverability drop by 20% just from using words like "free" or "guaranteed" in the wrong place.

the_margaret27d ago

Oh man, 50 unsubs a week really isn't that bad though. Honestly it depends on your list size too, like if you've got 100k people then that's barely a blip.