- Klaviyo's healthy ranges: unsubscribe rate under 0.3%, spam complaint rate under 0.01%. Over 1% unsubscribes or 0.05% spam complaints needs attention.
- Google wants your Postmaster Tools spam rate below 0.1%, and never 0.3% or higher. Yahoo's limit for bulk senders is 0.3%.
- Spam complaints matter far more than unsubscribes. An unsubscribe is someone leaving politely. A complaint hurts where your next email lands.
- Across 4 consumable brands I looked at, 3 of 4 saw no rise in unsubscribes when they sent more. Who you send to usually matters more than how often.
This is for Shopify founders on Klaviyo who just saw an unsubscribe or spam number on a campaign report and want to know if it's a problem.
What's a good unsubscribe rate for email?
Klaviyo's help center puts unsubscribe rate into three bands:
| Unsubscribe rate | Klaviyo's label |
|---|---|
| Under 0.3% | Healthy |
| 0.3% to 1% | Room for improvement |
| Over 1% | Needs attention |
Klaviyo says to aim for under 0.3% per campaign, regardless of industry. It calculates unsubscribe rate as the people who unsubscribed divided by emails delivered.
So, as a simple example, if a campaign is delivered to 20,000 people and 40 unsubscribe, that's 0.2%. You're fine. If 250 unsubscribe, that's 1.25%, and it's worth figuring out why.
A few things worth knowing before you panic over one send:
- Judge the trend, not one email. One bad campaign happens. Five in a row is a pattern.
- Big sends to cold people run higher. A full-list blast reaches people who haven't heard from you in months. Some of them will leave. That's expected.
- Flows and campaigns behave differently. Check them separately, so a busy welcome flow doesn't hide a campaign problem or the other way around.
What's a good spam complaint rate?
This is the number I'd actually worry about. There are two places to look, and they use different scales.
In Klaviyo, the help center bands look like this:
| Spam complaint rate | Klaviyo's label |
|---|---|
| Under 0.01% | Healthy |
| 0.01% to 0.05% | Room for improvement |
| Over 0.05% | Needs attention |
That's 1 complaint per 10,000 delivered emails for "healthy." Klaviyo's own article on spam complaints says the ideal is "as close to zero as possible."
In Google Postmaster Tools, Google's sender guidelines say to keep spam rates below 0.10% and "avoid ever reaching a spam rate of 0.30% or higher." Yahoo's sender best practices tell bulk senders to keep the spam rate below 0.3%.
Why the two scales? Part of it is that Klaviyo doesn't see every complaint. Klaviyo notes that Gmail doesn't share individual complaints with email platforms, so the rate in your Klaviyo report can miss some. That's why Klaviyo points you to Google Postmaster Tools for Gmail. If most of your list is on Gmail, Postmaster Tools is the more honest number.
My rule of thumb from those sources: keep Klaviyo's number near zero, and treat 0.1% in Postmaster Tools as your ceiling, not your target. If you want the full rundown on what Gmail, Yahoo and Outlook require, I put it in one place in Gmail, Yahoo and Outlook sender requirements.
Is an unsubscribe worse than a spam complaint?
No. It's the other way around.
Someone who unsubscribes is doing exactly what you asked them to do if they're done with you. They leave, they stop getting email, and your list gets a little cleaner. Someone who was never going to buy leaving isn't a real loss.
A spam complaint is different. Google says that maintaining a high spam rate "leads to increased spam classification." That means more of your emails, to everyone, start landing in spam. One complaint costs you more than one unsubscribe ever will.
That's also why both Google and Yahoo require one-click unsubscribe for marketing email from bulk senders, and Yahoo says to honor unsubscribes within 2 days. When leaving is easy, people unsubscribe instead of hitting "report spam." Klaviyo says the same: if the unsubscribe link is hard to find, people are "more likely to mark your email as spam." Make sure no custom template has dropped the visible footer link. (This is general information about inbox provider rules, not legal advice.)
Does sending more emails raise your unsubscribe rate?
Less than most founders fear. When I looked at 4 consumable brands, 3 of the 4 saw no rise in unsubscribes when they sent more. It's a small sample, so read it as directional, not a promise. One brand out of four is still enough to tell you to add sends with a plan.
What usually drives unsubscribes and complaints up isn't the number of emails. It's sending them to people who stopped caring. Klaviyo's spam complaint guidance says sending too often to unengaged profiles "makes recipients more likely to mark messages as spam," and recommends a sending schedule based on engagement instead of one fixed cadence for everyone.
I go deeper on this in does sending more emails increase unsubscribes, and on picking a cadence in how many emails per week.
Why is my unsubscribe rate high?
If you're consistently over 1%, or a single send jumped way past your usual number, check these in order:
- Who got the email? Look at the audience first. A full-list send to people who haven't clicked in a year is the most common cause.
- Did people know what they signed up for? Klaviyo recommends clearly stating at signup what people will get and on which channels. If your popup promised 10% off and nothing else, the newsletter that follows can feel like a surprise.
- Did the email match the brand? A hard sales push to a list used to education, or the other way around, can trigger a wave of exits.
- Was it a burst? Several sends in a few days to everyone, outside a big moment like a sale or restock, will show up here.
- Is the sender name recognizable? Klaviyo lists unclear sender info as one of the things that drives complaints. If people don't know who you are, they leave or report you.
How do I lower my spam complaint rate?
Most of the fixes come straight from Klaviyo's guidance on reducing complaints, and they line up with how I'd do it:
- Send campaigns to engaged segments. Build your regular sends around people who've recently clicked or bought, and save full-list sends for the moments that earn it. A sports training tech brand's engaged send to 7,145 people earned $0.19 per person, against $0.04 for a 49,475-person blast. Smaller audience, fewer annoyed people, more money per send.
- Run a sunset flow. Klaviyo suggests trying to re-engage people who've gone quiet, then suppressing those who still don't engage. A Klaviyo sunset flow does this automatically.
- Make unsubscribing obvious. Visible footer link, one-click header, global unsubscribe turned on.
- Set expectations at signup. Tell people what they're getting and how often.
- Check by inbox provider. Klaviyo's deliverability view by inbox provider gives a good picture of where people actually interact. If Gmail drops off and others don't, that's your clue.
If complaints are already high and your opens are falling, you may have a bigger deliverability problem. Start with Klaviyo emails going to spam.
How do my rates compare to similar brands?
Klaviyo's benchmarks reports compare you to a peer group of "roughly 100 companies that are similar to your own in size and scope," and they include both unsubscribe rate and spam report rate for email. That's a better comparison than any industry average, because it's built from brands that look like yours.
For the rest of the numbers that matter for food, beverage, supplement and other consumable brands, see my CPG email marketing benchmarks. And remember that unsubscribe rate is a health check, not a goal. Clicks and revenue per recipient tell you whether the email actually worked.
FAQ
Is a 1% unsubscribe rate bad?
It's the line where Klaviyo moves from "room for improvement" to "needs attention." One send at 1% isn't a crisis. Several in a row means you should look at who you're sending to.
What's a good unsubscribe rate for Klaviyo campaigns?
Under 0.3% per campaign. Klaviyo says that applies regardless of industry.
What spam complaint rate is too high?
In Klaviyo, over 0.05% needs attention. In Google Postmaster Tools, stay under 0.1% and never hit 0.3%. Yahoo's limit for bulk senders is also 0.3%.
Why doesn't my Klaviyo spam rate match Google Postmaster Tools?
Gmail doesn't share individual complaints with email platforms like Klaviyo, so Klaviyo's number can miss some. Use Postmaster Tools for your Gmail audience.
Should I remove people who unsubscribe?
No need. They've already opted out. What you should clean up are people who stay subscribed but never engage, through a sunset flow. More in Klaviyo suppressed profiles.
Founder of Bardown Digital, a Chicago-based Klaviyo email and retention agency for Shopify brands. He's worked with brands doing $500K to $100M a year, with $100M+ in email-attributed revenue across them.