Testing your opt-out process

When was the last time you tested your opt-out process? Did you just click the unsubscribe link to see if the page loaded? How did you confirm the email address was unsubscribed?
If you have a Gmail account, Gmail allows you to use unlimited aliases. For example, if your Gmail email address is josh@gmail.com, you can add the + symbol to your email address to create an alias. An example of an alias would be josh+test1@gmail.com. Sending an email to josh+test1@gmail.com gets delivered to the mailbox for josh@gmail.com.
On your next mailing add a Gmail alias email address like josh+unsubtest06192015@gmail.com to be included with the mailing. After sending the mailing, find the email sent to the alias address and go through the unsubscribe process.  After unsubscribing, log into your ESP or mailing software to confirm that the alias email address was successfully unsubscribed. Testing the unsubscribe process ensures that the landing page for the unsubscribe is working and that your ESP is registering the unsubscribe request.
A few reminders about your unsubscribe page:

  • The unsubscribe link shouldn’t automatically remove the subscriber as some filtering devices scan the links within the message and may automatically unsubscribe the user.
  • Brand the unsubscribe landing page to be similar to your website or the email message.
  • Include the ability to unsubscribe without asking for additional information as this is law in many jurisdictions, including the US.
  • Unsubscribe links must remain active for at least 30 days after a mailing, and the longer the unsubscribe link remains active the better.
  • Provide alternatives to just unsubscribing such as allowing the recipient to put a pause on receiving mail from you or reducing the number of messages they receive from you.

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Yes, spam is actually still a problem

I hear a lot of people claim that spam isn’t really a problem any more. That filters are so good that the average user doesn’t see a lot of spam and if they do get “legitimate” mail that they can just opt out.
These are great sounding arguments, the problem is that those arguments aren’t always true.
There is an address I stopped using for commercial mail around 1997 and all mail around 2002. It still gets hundreds of emails a month.
Those hundreds of emails a month are despite the fact that the address is behind commercial spam filters. It’s been on “flamers lists.” It’s on the “do not mail” list that came with the “Millions CD.”
In addition, I am very open with clients (and their affiliates) that this is a “spam trap” address. I’ve handed it out to dozens and dozens of companies over the years describing it as my spam trap address.
In November 2013, I unsubscribed from every single email received at that account – at least those that had unsubscribe links.
What does the mail volume look like now?
MonthlySpamCounts_Smallpng
If anything unsubscribing made the volume problems worse. In the best case it lowered the volume briefly to something approaching 10 emails a day.
There are currently over 500 messages I’ve received so far in August. These are messages advertising companies like Laura Ashley, MetLife, Military.com, Quibids, Walk In Tubs, Sainsbury’s, Bloomburg, Fidelity, Oral B, Lasix Vision Institute, Virgin Broadband, ClickNLoan, Timeshares, iMotors, Walmart, oil changes, Experian, Credit monitoring, Life insurance, ADT, CHW Home Warranty, Health Plans of America, Bosley Hair Solutions, Jillian Michaels Online, restaurant coupons, credit cards, SBA loans, and that’s before we get to the Garcinia cambogia, herbal viagra and clearly fraudulent stuff.
This account, that hasn’t been subscribed to anything in more than 10 years is getting hundreds of unasked for emails a month, even with the benefit of commercial filters. It appears to be being sold or traded in multiple countries (Laura Ashley, Virgin Broadband and Sainsbury’s are all in the UK). I don’t want this mail. I have tried to stop getting this mail.
Yes, spam is still a problem.

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On Father's Day

always be batman
I’m on quite a few mailing lists for companies whose main product is sending gifts: food hampers, jewelry, flowers, overpriced desk toys and so on. They tend to ramp up their volume before appropriate holidays such as Christmas, Mother’s Day, Thanksgiving, Valentine’s Day or Father’s Day and target their promotions to those particular holidays.
One recipient may have a toxic relationship with their Mother and not want to be reminded of Mother’s Day, another may have recently lost their Father and not want to revisit that distress every time they open their mail client in June, yet another may be recently divorced and really not want to see diamonds and roses in their inbox right now.
You should try and avoid sending mail that will distress your recipients. You should do that because you’re a compassionate human and you want to treat your recipients as humans. But if you need an ROI argument to justify the effort needed to do so… those recipients will associate your brand with that distress and then they’ll buy less or they’ll unsubscribe and you’ll lose their business entirely – even if they are interested in and responsive to your offers for the rest of the year.
How do you identify those recipients? Maybe just ask them. Or add an “Unsubscribe from Father’s Day promotions” link next to the “Unsubscribe” link – it’s not hard to do. Help your customers segment your list for you.

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Spot the unsub

A new game! Spot the unsub! Our first challenge is the footer from a major software company. How long does it take for you to to find the unsub link?

 
What’s even more annoying is that I never actually subscribed to mail from this company. A few years ago I was doing some work for them and they required I set up an account on their cloud service so they could share docs with me. Last month, they started emailing me as “a customer.” Yeah. No.

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