Increase in unsubscribes

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UPDATE 12/17/2015 2:30PM Pacific: I heard from Josh, the CEO of Unroll.me. He says:

Senders are seeing a spike in unsubscribe requests because Unroll.Me has been improving the process it uses to unsubscribe our users from emails they have chosen to unsubscribe from. This isn’t a bug and everything is working as it should.
This spike they are seeing is temporary and should level out once our recent improvements have caught up on the unsubscribe requests.

Requests should be processed as real unsubscribes.
At least one person I talked to was concerned as he personally called multiple subscribers who said they had not unsubscribed from his newsletter. If you are concerned about losing real subscribers, you do have some options. The most obvious is to send a single email, within 10 days of receiving the unsubscription request, notifying them that you received a request to unsubscribe through a 3rd party. Inform them you will be honoring the unsubscription request, but if the user was unsubscribed by mistake, they could resubscribe by clicking on a unique link.
Original Post
A lot of folks are talking about an anomalous increase in unsubscribes over the last few days.
Some information that’s been gathered so far and shared with me.

  1. Unsub rates have increased by a significant factor (going from a few hundred to tens of thousands at some ESPs).
  2. Only some senders are effected.
  3. The unsubscribes are all to mailto: links
  4. SomeOne unroll.me user reports are reporting being unsubscribed from their some of their lists without them asking remembering asking to unsubscribe. for it.
  5. Conversations with some subscribers confirm they didn’t actively unsubscribe.

I’m still collecting information from folks, but the current version looks like there is something going on with unroll.me that is causing significant spikes in some sender’s unsubscribe rates.
Feel free to contact me directly if you have any information you’d like to share. I’ll keep updating this post throughout the day as I get info from people.
UPDATE 1:30PM Pacific:
More information is coming in and some people who I trust are starting to say that there was a bug in unroll.me’s code that meant some unsubscribes weren’t processed in a timely fashion. They’ve fixed that bug. They are now running through and resending all requests that weren’t initially sent. I’ve got inquiries into unroll.me to see if they can confirm this.
Some folks are saying the requests are primarily for older campaigns. Other folks are telling me they’re seeing new campaigns included in the unsub requests.
Hopefully unroll.me will clarify what’s going on. It really seems like something broke and they’re sending incorrect unsubscribe requests. But I’m hesitant to recommend ignoring the unsubscribes because if there is any way they’re valid, then that’s a violation of CAN SPAM. Not that I think the FTC will go after anyone for this, and CAN SPAM says that the 10 days starts when the request is received. 

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Bad unsubscribe processes

We recently renewed our support contract with VMWare. It’s a weirdly complicated system, in that we can’t buy directly from VMWare, but have to buy through one of their resellers. In this case, we purchased the original hardware from Dell, so we renewed our contract through Dell.
Dell sends my email address over to VMWare as part of the transaction.
My only role in this is as CFO. I approve the purchase and pay the bill. I don’t do anything technical with the license.
The email failures start when VMWare decides that I need to receive mail about some user group meetings they’re holding all over the US. First off, I’m not the right person to be sending this mail to inside our company. I’m the billing contact, not the user contact. Then, they send me mail about meetings all over the US, when they know exactly where I’m located. Would it be so hard to do a semi-personalized version that highlighted the meetings in my local area then pointing out the other locations? Apparently, yes, it is so hard.
The biggest failures, though are in the unsubscribe process.
unsubscribe option
The unsubscribe page is no big deal. I get to unsub from all VMWare communications, and submit that request without having to figure out what my VMWare password is or anything.
After I hit submit, I’m taken to this page.
VMWareThank you
Wait? What?
“Thank you for registering?” I didn’t register! I don’t want you to contact me. Plus, this is a HP co-branded page when I’m not a customer of HP. VMWare knows this, they know they got my address from Dell.
The biggest problem is that I’m not sure that my address was actually unsubscribed. I suspect that someone copied a form from elsewhere on the site to use as an unsubscribe form. This person forgot to change the link after the “submit” button was clicked. But what else did they forget to change? Is the unsubscribe actually registered in the database?
I suppose only time will tell if VMWare actually processed my unsubscribe. If they didn’t they’re technically in violation of CAN SPAM.
The lesson, though, is someone should check unsubscribe forms. Someone in marketing should own the unsubscribe process, and that includes confirming that unsubscribe pages work well enough.

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Don't unsubscribe from spam!!

Having been around the email and anti-spam industry for a while, I’ve just about seen and heard it all. In fact, sometimes I’ve been around for the beginning of the myth.
One myth that seems to never actually go away is “unsubscribing just confirms you’re a real address and your address will get sold and your spam load will explode.” This is related but orthogonal to “spammers harvest addresses out of unsubscribe forms.” The reality is that both of these things used to be true. Unsubscribing would confirm your email address and increase your spam load. Spammers would harvest addresses out of unsubscribe forms.
But neither of these things have really been true for the last decade.
I have had clients over the years that are spammers. Some of the are names that you probably would recognize. Some of them are companies we could probably all agree are spammers.  Some of them are buying addresses from companies that are spammers. Some of them are companies that have a good mailing program here and then hire snowshoers over there. Sometimes they come to me claiming to be real mailers “with minor delivery problems.” Sometimes they come to me saying that a blocklist has recommended they talk to me about repairing their processes. Sometimes they even actually want to fix things. Sometimes they’re just looking to say that I’ve given them a clean bill of health (which is not something I do).
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I have never encountered a situation where unsubscribing one of those addresses caused a “multiplication” (to quote one anti-spammer) of my spam load.
I’ve had cases where my clients have ignored unsubscribes. I’ve had cases where my clients have decided years later to add me to their list again. I’ve had cases where they’ve been bought out and my address has been reactivated by the new owners. I’ve had cases where months or even years of 5xx responses was ignored. I’ve seen just about every bad bit of behavior on behalf of spammers. But I’ve never actually had unsubscribing increase my spam load.
It doesn’t matter how often people demonstrate unsubscribing doesn’t result in more spam in the current email ecosystem. (Ken Magill 2013, NYTimes 2011, dayah.com 2009). It doesn’t matter that many mailers treat “this is spam” button hits the same way they handle unsubscribe requests. The myth still persists.
 
 

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