Hey @jadebiscuit
Thank you for reaching out about your list growth, this is a great question.
The "Subscribed to List" metric is not, across the board, the most accurate metric to use for determining total subscribers, though this depends on how your collection / funnel system is configured to collect subscribers. Our system does not post "Subscribed to List" events for every method that profiles can logically signup to receive marketing from a business. For example, Klaviyo will not add subscribed events to profiles that are manually uploaded to a list, even if those profiles are technically subscribed (e.g. they subscribed using a written sign-up sheet at an in-person event).
However, the list growth report accounts for this. This report considers all possibilities of how a customer may have been added to a list; it does not look exclusively at "subscriptions" to a list within any defined lens, but rather accounts for any possible addition to the list itself, whether this was through a signup form, a manual upload, etc.
To be specific, the "Subscribed to List" metric will fire when any of the following actions take place:
- When someone fills out a Klaviyo signup form
- When a profile is added to a list with email consent via Quick Add
- When a profile is added to a list with email consent via CSV upload
- When someone subscribes through a Klaviyo-built integration, or certain third-party integrations
While the above event covers a lot of use cases for certain customers, this may leave a wide gap for others - this is what I meant by saying the efficacy of using this metric" depends on how your collection / funnel system is configured to collect subscribers" above.
With that being said, I would suggest continuing to use the list growth report for the most accurate numbers for a specific list. The list growth report(s) offer/s the ability to narrow down a specific timeframe and shows the different subscribe and unsubscribe groups (i.e. the "how" of a customer's fun]subscribe).
Hope this helps!