Why making it easy to unsubscribe from your email is a good thing

I’ve been working a lot lately with CRM communications, and in particular email newsletters. I’ll always sign up for a websites newsletter just to have a look at what they’re doing and see if I can pick up any tips.

Now they want ME to email them!

A couple I got through today, had that annoying feature of making it difficult to unsubscribe by making me email them with “Unsubscribe” in the subject line. This is awkward as I use Gmail as my everyday mail account, but pick up mailto: links on Apple Mail/Outlook – which would mean the wrong email address would be unsubscribed.

Here’s two examples, first up

Allianz Pet Insurance

They’ve got an link for customer feedback, but no automated opt out web link.

Buy & Sell

A web publication with a call to action of phoning to place an ad, along with a poor looking email, got a ‘Report Spam’ from me.

Getting marked as SPAM

Making it difficult to unsubscribe, not only annoys the recipient but has a negative effect on your future communications. What will happen is that the next email sent will automatically go into my Spam folder, and possibly other recipients as your sending server IP’s get blacklisted.

Getting it right

A quick look around my inbox, and here’s one from expansys.

A quick summary of the email, along with a web copy and unsubscribe link – all beside the logo of the sender.

List Quality, not Quantity

One of the main reasons for making it easy to unsubscribe is keeping your email list healthy. That means removing the following:

• Unsubscribers
• Hard bounced emails, and soft bounced after around 3 retries
• Spam report list from email provider

Most automated email software will allow you to auto remove unsubscribers, with some allowing them to input reasons why they’re unsubscribing. Hard bounces (email doesn’t exist) and soft bounce(out of office/mailbox full) should also be catered for.

Getting a list of who marked you for spam, is usually only available on a subscription service.

More on getting it right with email

• Microsofts Junk E-Mail Reporting Program
• Best practice for email delivery by Smashing Magazine
• Mailchimps resource centre

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