Quiet leavers: the customers who never unsubscribe

I almost never unsubscribe. I just stop opening. I'm not alone, and most CRM reporting can't see us leave.

What a quiet leaver is

A customer who's still on your list, still technically reachable, and no longer listening. They haven't unsubscribed, complained or marked you as spam. They've just stopped.

Why your reports miss them

Unsubscribe rates count the people who bother to leave. Quiet leavers don't bother.

Open rates don't help as much as they used to, either. Since Apple's Mail Privacy Protection, a lot of opens are recorded whether anyone read the email or not. So a list can look healthy while a good share of it has stopped paying attention.

How to spot them

• Look at what people do, not what they open: clicks, visits, purchases, app sessions, replies.
• Find the customers whose last real action was longer ago than their usual gap between orders.
• Check who's getting the most messages and doing the least with them. It's often the same group.
• Read your own programme as a customer would: on a phone, next to everything else that arrived that day.

What to do about it

Not more volume, and not a bigger discount. Give them a reason to look again: a message that's clearly for them, at a moment that makes sense, in the channel they actually use.

That's the three questions: why this, why now and why here?

And ask them. A plain “what would you like from us?” gets answers you won't find in a dashboard.