Al over at SpamResource reports that the next generation of Apple’s iOS has support for the list unsubscribe header.
To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time an independent email client has built in support for the List-Unsubscribe header. Microsoft and Google support it, but only in their webmail system. Hopefully other mail clients will follow suit.
When was the last time you tested your opt-out process? Did you just click the unsubscribe link to see if the page loaded? How did you confirm the email address was unsubscribed?
If you have a Gmail account, Gmail allows you to use unlimited aliases. For example, if your Gmail email address is josh@gmail.com, you can add the + symbol to your email address to create an alias. An example of an alias would be josh+test1@gmail.com. Sending an email to josh+test1@gmail.com gets delivered to the mailbox for josh@gmail.com.
On your next mailing add a Gmail alias email address like josh+unsubtest06192015@gmail.com to be included with the mailing. After sending the mailing, find the email sent to the alias address and go through the unsubscribe process. After unsubscribing, log into your ESP or mailing software to confirm that the alias email address was successfully unsubscribed. Testing the unsubscribe process ensures that the landing page for the unsubscribe is working and that your ESP is registering the unsubscribe request.
A few reminders about your unsubscribe page:
Dear Laura,
We are having a bit of an internal struggle on our end as we launch our new quarterly account summaries. What are your views on including an unsubscribe link in these emails?
My personal opinion is that we should. Although the summaries can be classified as “transactional”, they are not tied to a specific recent transaction a customer made and can be viewed as a general reminder to shop again. As I gathered data to present my case, I reviewed several different account summaries and I found it split close to 50/50. Do you have any data or thoughts to support one way or another?
Thanks,
Summary Judgement
A comment came through on my post about unsubscribing that helpfully told me that the problem was I didn’t unsubscribe correctly.
As you know, there are usually two unsubscribe options in many of the bulk senders emails. Are you unsubscribing from the global or the offer unsub? Unless you are unsubscribing from both, you will still be on the lists.
To address the underlying question, I did unsubscribe from both links for those very few mails in my mailbox that had double unsubscribe links. I know that some spammers use multiple unsubscribe links in their emails. We routinely recommend clients not use 3rd party mailers with double unsubscribes because it’s a clear sign the 3rd party mailer is a spammer.
Given the presence of double unsubscribes I generally assume the point is to confuse recipients. By having multiple unsubscribe links the spammers can ignore unsubscribe requests with the excuse that “you unsubscribed from the wrong link.” Plausible deniability at its finest. The best part for the spammer is that it doesn’t matter which unsubscribe link the recipient picks, it will always be the Wrong One.
I’ve been dealing with spam since the late 90s, and have been professionally consulting on delivery for over 14 years. If I can’t figure out what link to use to unsubscribe, how is anyone supposed to figure out how to make mail stop?
In some cases, the unsubscribe links admitted that the address I was trying to unsubscribe was already removed from the list. They helpfully refused to let me unsubscribe again through their form. But they offered a second way to unsubscribe.
The address I was unsubscribing was the same one I was unsubscribing. Some of the emails even helpfully told me “this email was sent to trapaddress@” which is the address in the above screenshot.
I’m sure my friend will come back and comment with “why didn’t you unsubscribe by forwarding the email?” Because I was spending enough time unsubscribing as it was, and I didn’t want to have to try and navigate yet another unsubscribe process. I knew they weren’t going to stop mailing me, no matter what hoops I jumped through.
I’m not saying that all unsubscribe processes are broken, there are millions and millions of emails sent every day with simple and effective unsubscribe links. What I am saying is that there is a lot of mail getting to inboxes that users never requested nor wanted. “Just unsubscribing” from this mail Does Not Work. It just keeps coming and coming and coming.
But of course, the mail still coming is my fault, as I was unable to correctly unsubscribe. 