Help with estimating unsubscribe rates

Hi everyone,

I've just signed up, recommended to join as apparently this is a great place for IM advice

I would like to ask for your advice and experience with newsletters and auto-responder campaigns.

I am a big fan of automation and I am building up a list of around 20 auto-responder emails for all new members of my site for the two reasons of bringing repeat traffic back on a weekly basis and then a couple of months into the campaign pushing my premium products.


I currently do not have my auto responders running, but I do have 30,000+ subscribers, growing by 250-300 per day on average.

Once I have all my auto-responders designed, set up and ready to go, I will switch them on and start firing out the sequence to all 30k members, and subsequently those who sign up on a daily basis.

Now, for my questions:

I only use my subscriber list when I launch new products, so my emails are infrequent (once every 2 months-ish) and I have around a 1.5% unsubscribe rate of those email which are opened.

1. By suddenly switching to a weekly newsletter, how much higher can I expect my unsubscribe rates to increase?

2. I have planned a 20 week auto responder campaign, meaning that with 300 sign ups per day, after 20 weeks I will be sending emails to 6,000 people (and based on 20% of those being opened and clicked) that's an extra 1,200 visitors per day driven to my blog.

What percentage of my sign ups can I expect to ride out the full 20 week newsletters?

3. What tips can you give me for keeping people in the list longer and not unsubscribing?

I have thought myself to insert an extra 4 or 5 emails that have 'Subscriber only content - available only to those subscibed to this newsletter' - start the first email as one of these exclusive freebies and also publicise what the next freebie in 4 emails time will be. Will this be effective in keeping people hooked?


I must thank you all in advanced for those who can offer me any insights from experience here as it will greatly put my mind at risk about losing subscribers and utilising my list for more traffic (and conversions)!