Doing it right

It’s that time of the year – marketers send more email than usual, recipients unsubscribe from their lists.
Clicking on the unsubscription link in the email I just received took me to an unsubscription landing page. The box for my email address was prepopulated based on the cookie in the unsubscription link, the default setting is to unsubscribe me from all mail from the sender and just clicking the sole button on the page will unsubscribe me.
It offers me an alternative to unsubscribing from everything – letting me receive just the content I want. It does that immediately on the unsubscription landing page (rather than suggesting I go to a subscription center or, worse, requiring I click on a different link in the mail originally). And it tells me the important things about the newsletters I might want to subscribe to – what they’re about and how often they’re sent.
oldways
This isn’t anything particularly special, but sometimes it’s nice to highlight someone who is doing it right.

Happy Holidays
December 2015: The month in email

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Some email related news

A couple links to relevant things that are happening in email.
M3AAWG released the Help! I’m on a Blocklist! (PDF link) doc this week. This is the result of 4 years worth of work by a whole lot of people at M3AAWG. I was a part of the working group (“doc champion” in M3AAWG parlance) and want to thank everyone who was involved and contributed to the process. I am very excited this was approved and published so people can take advantage of the collective wisdom of M3AAWG participants.
In other announcements, Gmail announced today on their Google+ page that that they were putting a new “unsubscribe” link next to the sender name when mail is delivered to the Promotions, Social or Forums tab. This appears to be the official announcement of the functionality they announced at the SF M3AAWG last February. It likely means that all users are currently getting the “unsubscribe” link. What Gmail doesn’t mention in that blog post is that this functionality uses the “List-Unsubscribe” header, not the link in the email, but I don’t think anyone except bulk mailers really care about how it’s being done, just that it is.
Also today Gmail announced they were going to recognize usernames with non-Latin or accented characters in the name. Eventually, they claim, they’ll also allow people to get Gmail addresses with accented characters.

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My holiday email prediction

I was on IRC with a group of ESP delivery specialists last week and one of them was looking for something to blog about. I suggested a list of holiday predictions. Not that I have a huge number of holiday predictions, but I did come up with one.
During the holiday season at least one retailer will decide that they have information so important that they will ignore my opt-0ut request and add me to their holiday blast list.
So what’s your holiday email prediction?
 

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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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