📊 Tracking Subscription Changes: Who’s Opting In and Out (and Why It Matters)

Shauna

Ever wonder which parts of your community are drawing followers—or where people are quietly opting out?

Understanding these subscription-change moments gives you insight into what content sparks interest, which channels members actually want updates from, and where engagement might be slipping.

💡 Why Track Subscription Changes?

Every time someone follows or unfollows a category, or subscribes/unsubscribes to your Email Digest, they’re giving you feedback through action.

Tracking these shifts helps you:

• Spot interest trends — which topics or categories drive people to click “Follow”
• Measure Digest adoption — see how many members are opting into community emails
• Identify notification preferences — email vs. in-app followers
• Catch early disengagement signals — if unfollows spike in a category, that’s worth a closer look

It’s one of those behind-the-scenes metrics that tells a big story about how people connect with your community.

⚙️ Start with the “Subscriptions Change” Data Source

You’ll find this in Analytics when creating a new chart.

Each time a user follows/unfollows a category or subscribes/unsubscribes to the Email Digest, an event is logged here.

(This is different from the regular “Subscriptions” data source, which is now deprecated.)

📸 Example 1: Overview of Follow/Unfollow Activity

First, let’s start broad and use the following group by options

• Category Name
• Change Type

This gives you a top-level view of which categories have the most subscription activity and what kind of changes are happening (e.g., more “Follow” events vs. “Unfollow”). I also like starting high level so I can see what's possible in analytics and then I can get more in depth as I discover what data is available and what info will help me make better decisions for my community.

📈 Example 2: Tracking Email Digest Growth (and Drop-Offs)

So we see above what kinds of change types are available, and now we want to dial in what's going on with email digests

Next, narrow in on Email Digest activity specifically. To build this:

• Data Source: Subscriptions Change
• Group By: Change Type (and any other metrics you want, I've done role type in this example)
• Filter: Change Type - Include only “Enabled Email Digest”
• Metric: Count of Users who enabled it

You can use this method to determine how many folks disabled email digest as well:

You could add other group by options other than role here, such as rank or username depending on what you are trying to understand.

I've used table style charts here just because I like me some raw data especially when I am doing analysis, but you can also use other chart types if you are more visual or happy with your data and want to view it in a more visually pleasing way, for example:

You can also go basic and just use scorecards if you want a high level number here:

This simple setup helps you answer:

“Are more people opting into the Digest, or unsubscribing lately?”

It’s a quick gut-check on how your community newsletter strategy is performing.

📊 Example 3: Zoom In on a Specific Category

Finally, let’s get granular and look at how followers interact with a specific category.

For this chart, I've started by adding a category name filter to dial in on our "Talk Community" category (which you should totally follow btw ;) )

You'll see a few different change types here:

• Enabled Follow — when a member starts following the category to see new posts in their main discussions list.
• Disabled Follow — when someone unfollows the category and stops seeing those posts in their feed.
• Enabled Email Discussions — when a member chooses to receive new discussions from that category by email.
• Disabled Email Discussions — when a member unsubscribes from those discussion notification emails.
• Enabled Email Comments — when a user subscribes to email updates for new comments or replies in that category.

👉 Each of these gives you a peek at how members prefer to engage with that topic — whether they want updates in-app, in their inbox, or not at all.

You can play with this data by change the chart type, dialing in to other factors like role, rank, or type as well.

Now you can see exactly how people are choosing to stay connected with that category—and whether preferences are shifting from email to in-app notifications, for instance.

This is especially useful for content owners or product teams who want to understand how their updates are being consumed.

🚀 Turning Insights into Action

Once you’ve built your charts:

• Watch for spikes in follows after big announcements or new content launches.
• Track Digest growth to measure how well your email strategy is working.
• Identify categories losing followers to guide future cleanup or content refreshes.

Then, use these insights to adjust your engagement strategy—what to promote, how to communicate, and where to focus your community energy.

💬 What’s Next?

I’ll drop in the screenshots and examples above to walk through each setup visually, but in the meantime—

How are you tracking engagement shifts in your community?

Have you used subscription data to drive content or communication changes?

Is there other data here you want to track and aren't sure how? Tell us in the comments!

GingerAnderson

Super helpful! I always appreciate the details on how to set up the charts/graphs. Thank you!