Jane! Stop this crazy thing!

One of the consequences of moving to Ireland is I’m unsubscribing from most commercial mail, including some lists I’ve been on for a decade or more. Sadly, many of the companies don’t ship to Ireland, or their shipping costs are prohibitively expensive. Even if I wanted to purchase from them, I couldn’t.

This process has made me realise how horrible many company’s unsubscribe processes are. Look, I get it, having people leave your list is no fun. Losing subscribers is not what we’re in this for. But, sometimes, sometimes you just have to let them go. But there are senders out there that continue to mail me after I have unsubscribed.

In one case, every time I unsubscribe I get a note “you’ve been unsubscribed from company <list name>.” There is no option available for me to unsubscribe from all company publications. At this point I’ve submitted at least 3 separate unsubscribe requests, and the company is still mailing me. This is, in fact, a CAN SPAM violation.

In both the original law and the rulemaking from the FTC opt out requests are to the “sender” of the commercial email message. We can rules lawyer about how different divisions of a company may be different senders, or how different messages are coming from different people inside the company. In this case, though, the email address in the From: line of the message is identical. They aren’t different “senders” they’re the exact same sender.

The DMA fought long and hard to make sure CAN SPAM was an opt-out law. They argued that every company should have  the opportunity to try and sell consumers something. “We call it the ‘one bite at the apple’ rule,” [Patricia Faley of the Direct Marketing Association] says. “Give me one chance to show you what I have to offer you, and if you don’t like it, then I won’t contact you again.”(Congress has hard time stomaching e-mail spam).  Unfortunately, all too many companies forget the won’t contact you again piece.

In fact, just yesterday I received email from the DMA of Northern California that was in blatant violation of their one-bite rule and CAN SPAM. They got the address from me because I spoke on a panel at a meeting back in 2002 or 2003. I never actually opted in, but as part of the event they required every attendee to give them a business card. After I got the first message I unsubscribed. Yes, the unsubscribe request was more than 15 years ago. That doesn’t make it invalid.

Worse for the DMA, the address is now a spamtrap. Knowing who was at the meeting with me, that wasn’t the only address turned into a spamtrap.

If someone goes through the trouble to opt out of your mail, listen to them. Respect their no. Senders who don’t create a preference center need to accept that when a recipient opts out of one email, then the recipient has opted out of all emails. Sure, if you have a preference center, they can pick and choose and maybe they will want to stay on the recipe list without staying on the sales list. But lacking that facility unsubscribe means unsubscribe from everything.

Likewise, opt-outs don’t expire! If someone says to stop mailing them and don’t contact them again, you stop mailing them and don’t contact them again. The DMA should know better. They’re supposed to be industry leaders in best practices. Unfortunately, they failed.

Email only works because senders respect recipients. Both of these examples show marketers that haven’t bothered to actually consider their recipients. You can’t respect someone you haven’t even thought about.

Related Posts

iOS List Unsubscribe Functionality

Al did a great post over on Spamresource about the how the new list unsubscribe function in the default mail client from iOS10. What’s been interesting to me is how much I’m hearing from ESP folks about how their customers want it gone.
If you don’t know what we’re talking about, in the default mail client on iOS10, Apple is now offering a way to unsubscribe from list mail by placing an unsubscribe link at the top of the message.
ListUnsub
As you can see, this isn’t just for commercial mail, it’s in place for every mailing list that has a List-Unsubscribe header. (This is a screenshot from something I posted to OI this morning). For me, it’s somewhat intrusive. I’m on a lot of discussion lists – technical, marketing, business and even a couple social ones. Reading them on my phone has become a challenge, as every email in a thread contains the “unsubscribe” button now.
Luckily, you can dismiss the message for all posts to that mailing list by hitting the ⮾⮾⮾⮾x. Interestingly, once you’ve turned it off there seems to be no way to turn it back on for that list.
Senders have different complaints, however, they do not have to do with intrusiveness or usability issues.
I’ve heard complaints about placement and about how easy it makes it to unsubscribe. One person even stated that everyone knows the place for an unsubscribe is at the bottom of a message and it should never be at the top of a message. I find these arguments unpersuasive. Unsubscribing should be easy. Unsubscribing should be trivial. People should be able to stop getting mail on a whim. Particularly here in the US, where unsolicited mail is legal, being able to quickly opt-out is the only thing keeping some of our mailboxes useful.
I’ve also heard some concerns that are a little more understandable. One company was concerned that unsubscribes go directly to their ESP rather than directly to them. This is a somewhat more understandable concern. Good senders use unsubscribes as part of their KPIs and as part of their campaign metrics. They know how much an unsubscribe costs them and will use that as part of their metrics for defining a successful campaign. Still, though, it’s not that big a concern. ESPs are already handling these kinds of unsubscribes from providers like gmail and hotmail.
Almost 7 years ago I blogged about a sender who wanted an unsubscribe link in the email client. It was a bit of snark on my part. The interesting part, though, is that some senders want unsubscribe mediated in the client and others things it’s horrible. I think this tells me that there’s no universal right answer. It Depends might be the most hated statement in deliverability, but it is the absolutely the reality of the situation.
 
 

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TWSD: Don't honor opt-outs

One of the big arguments various mailers make is that they make it easy for users to opt-out of mail, so it’s not a big deal. Users who don’t want to receive the mail, can make it stop. This was one of the guiding principles of CAN SPAM. The sender can make the decision to send mail to any recipient but they have to offer an opt-out.
The problem is there are a lot of major companies out there that don’t honor opt-outs. Since earlier this year I’ve been tracking when I opt-out of mail. Why? Because I kept getting the feeling that I’d opted out of mail before, but kept getting it.
The good(?) news is that it wasn’t my imagination, some of these companies aren’t honoring their opt-outs. The bad news is that major companies are not honoring opt-outs.

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I subscribed to what?

Tomorrow is GDPR day. That’s the day when the new Global Data Protection Regulations take effect in the EU. I’m sure everyone reading this blog has seen dozens, if not hundreds, of blog posts, articles, webinars, and guidance docs about how to comply. I’m not going to rehash it because, other folks know this better than me.
There are a some things I’m finding fascinating watching  this whole GDPR thing.
First, the number of companies who have my addresses and I don’t know why. Take Newsweek (yes, the magazine people). They’re sending GDPR notifications to my LinkedIn address. I can’t figure out why they’re harvesting / buying addresses from LinkedIn. Then there’s SALESmango who are some company that started spamming me a few years ago and refuses to accept unsubscribe request. They’re sending me opt-in requests. Yeah, no, go away. I told you to stop, but wow, you won’t.
Another interesting piece is just how much I’ve signed up for over the last 18 – 20 years I’ve been using this set of addresses. Wow. So much mail. And, generally, I thought of myself as relatively careful in who I gave email addresses to. I don’t normally go around dropping addresses into forms but even a couple a month adds up over 20 years.
Then there are the companies violating CAN SPAM in one way or another. Sending mail to unsubscribed addresses and refusing to include an opt-out link are the two things I’ve seen regularly. Yeah, no. I think it’s safe to say that if I’ve opted out from receiving your mail, you should probably put my data away in a dark closet and not touch it again. But.. but.. but… But nothing. Go away. As for the lack of an unsubscribe link, get over yourself. You’re not that special. I don’t think that this really is something that counts for exemption.
Also, is there an official template? So many of these emails look identical. I have to give credit to whomever did it first. Because if plagiarism is the sincerest form of praise, you have an entire industry praising you.
Finally, it’s been amusing to watch the general frustration with all the GDPR mail. It seems many people are getting tired of the deluge. That’s OK, though, it should end by Saturday. Or so we can only hope.
 

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