Comments on: How not to handle unsubscribes

By: Broken Policies – Word to the Wise

Broken Policies – Word to the Wise — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 17:21:32 +0000

[...] and other bank analogues that require an account number, that do not verify email addresses should not require account numbers to talk to someone about the [...]

By: Amran

Amran — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 15:22:46 +0000

Ok, this reminds me of what we experience. We got a call from one of the BIG BANK who considering outsourcing their email marketing to us. Well, being a tiny tiny mini company (comparing to them) we are so proud to be even consider by them. We did our presentation, they like it until the one BIG question. How do you handle unsubscribe?

Of course, with pride, we say, one click and our jaw drop when the Director of E-commerce for the bank said that she does not like that. Unsubscribe to be as difficult as possible. It is already difficult to get subscriber and when we get them, we should not make it easy for them to leave us.

I reply, but why do you still want to email people who no longer interested to hear from you?

Her replied, this is business, this is marketing (and you small, tiny little people know nothing about this), you shove them with all your marketing stuff, whether they like it or not and one day, they might fall for it.

The saddest truth, we are one of their clients, yah we bank with them. But we are happy that we never did sign up for their newsletter.

By: jennifer

jennifer — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 18:31:01 +0000

ajcjobs.com is doing this to me right now.

they merged their accounts a while back and in the merge mentioned that if you didn’t want a new account with their new partner to simply do nothing and no account would be set up.

but I still get emails from them.

they have no unsubscribe link on their mailing, only a link to login to your (non-existent) account, and no real reply to address.

By: J.D.

J.D. — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 20:13:23 +0000

I doubt Paypal’s security people (who are pushing authentication) are in the customer service escalation path for a marketing permissions issue.

By: Trout

Trout — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 19:54:55 +0000

I find this deeply disturbing, and am especially agreeing with Tara. I am astonished that such a big player could get something this fundamental, this wrong: importing an ancient list, especially of people who have never HAD an account with the company in question, has never been a good idea. I’d love to see a single verifiable anecdote of such a move actually creating more profit than damage. The un-subscribe foul-up is equally bad but perhaps marginally more understandable. All in all I can sum up my opinion thus:

“Oy!”

By: Tara

Tara — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 13:45:28 +0000

I just can’t believe that they are telling people to block them with all of the delivery/authentication stuff they are pushing because they are so widely phished. Most folks will hit the spam button rather than block is my guess and that will really screw with filters. WOW.

By: Huey

Huey — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 18:28:38 +0000

JD’s comment and things I’ve heard elsewhere lead me to believe that someone there made a spectacular mistake importing old addresses into their current marketing list, and the internet being what it is, I expect a variety of automated systems to start the slow but inexorable process that winds up seeing that this someone receives a swift kick inna dink at some point here in the next week or two.

By: DJ Waldow

DJ Waldow — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 12:38:56 +0000

Laura -

Wow. Wow. Wow. I admire your persistence. It reminds me of my (not related to unsub) conversations with Saks Fifth Avenue about a bill we keep getting even though we haven’t purchased from Saks in 8 months. Not only is the PayPal required login annoying, but as you say, the new CAN-SPAM regs will make it illegal come July 7.

I tell my fellow Brontos all the time (and preach it in the blogosphere any chance I get)…there is no apparent correlation between revenue and email marketing best practices. In other words, just because you are one of the “big boys” does not mean that you get it.

I applaud your post for calling out PayPal. It is my belief that if the industry players (like you!) continue to write posts like the one above, the tide will begin to turn. We need to highlight poor practices and give clear examples of how to “do it right.”

On the Bronto Blog, my colleague – Kimberly – wrote a post in November of last year titled “Don’t Disengage Your “Target” Audience” where she scolds Target for their poor design practices.

http://blog.bronto.com/2007/11/29/dont-disengage-your-target-audience/

The good news? Check out comment 3 from “Aaron.” At least they are reading….

dj at bronto

By: J.D.

J.D. — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 23:25:38 +0000

Yeah, they started sending partner marketing email to a tagged address I used with an account that I closed a few years ago, but they didn’t send the same message to the account I still actively use.

In other words, they’re respecting the preference settings of current users, but not former users.

\Hard to believe that this was intentional; more likely to be an unintended (though still potentially illegal) side effect.

By: mignon

mignon — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 20:22:46 +0000

Requiring someone to log into a website in order to unsubscribe from marketing mail is obnoxious. Requiring them to activate an old account to stop receiving marketing mail they should never have received in the first place? I’m speechless.