Why is a simple unsubscribe process really important?

September 14, 2010

This recent comic strip from Brad Colbow reminded me of a little something. And it’s that the easiest way to turn an email subscriber…

from being a happy, purchasing customer…

Happy customer

into someone who wants to set your house on fire…

Crazy, peeved guy

... is to make it really hard to leave your mailing list. For this reason and others, we’ve made it a requirement that you add one of our instant unsubscribe links to your campaign, before or during the import process. This also means that the unsubscribe process can’t be guarded by a login screen. Looking at things from a subscriber’s perspective, there’s a solid reason why we discourage making things more difficult than they should be:

Not only is it the law to make it super-simple to unsubscribe from an email list, but your customers will appreciate it. Besides, who wants to churn through ‘Please unsubscribe me!!!’ email replies everyday? Not I.

So… How do we manage unsubscribes?

The skinny is that after someone clicks on one of our instant unsubscribe links, their status is immediately changed from being an active subscriber to unsubscribed for that particular list. This means that there’s no need for their details to be ‘washed’ or manually removed from future email campaigns. By default, unsubscribing from a list will also unsubscribe that address from all other lists in the same account, so if the address is on your ‘customers’ list and your ‘newsletter’ list, they will be marked as unsubscribed from both lists.

Unsubscribed email addresses also get added to your account’s suppression list, which prevents you from accidentally importing them. You can change this default behavior (so that clicking unsubscribe will only remove the subscriber from the specific list that campaign we sent to) in your account’s ‘Unsubscribe settings’. For more information and examples, check out this useful help topic.

Now we’ve covered the why and how of our unsubscribe process, we’d like to hear your take. Have you had an interesting or strange experience when unsubscribing (or managing unsubscribes) from an email newsletter? Tell us all about it in the comments below.

Posted in: Tips & Resources

13 Comments

Rachel
September 15, 2010 3:48am

I’ve hit unsubscribe before only to have it tell me it may take up to a week.

A week? I’m barely tolerant of 72 hours, I want instant.

Worse, I’ve now unsubscribed several times over the past couple months and am still receiving emails!

This is why I clearly put subscription options at the top and bottom of my emails.
Brian Kenny
September 15, 2010 8:04am

I’ve been ranting on about this “guarding” of unsubscriptions by login prompts forever. I cannot agree with it more, if I, or any users cannot simply click a link in the email (at the bottom) that says unsubscribe and be INSTANTLY unsubscribed, I hate that company.

Even though like Campaign Monitor it might be someone else pulling the trigger and using it as a service. I hate everyone involved because of it.
Matthias
September 15, 2010 11:11am

I have only one side comment. What I have experienced is that someone send his e-mail to someone else and the other person is unsubscribing for them.

I would say its a must to have a quick (one click) unsubscribe but the person should get a email to confirm and revoke there unsubscribtion in case someone else unsubscribed them.
Nickolas Simard
September 15, 2010 1:22pm

Red this strip yesterday, I laughed (though it’s saddening) at how true it is for some mailing list!

Unsubscribing should be easy and a pain free process… otherwise, an unsubscriber may never come back, or even SPAM your email.

I usually put an icon (button) with a line as “Unsubscribe” at the below of my email so the user see it easily, should there be need.
Dennis
September 15, 2010 2:00pm

What about putting another screen in. Sort of a confirmation screen where they go after hitting unsubscribe. There the possibility is offered to change e-mail frequency, change e-mail address,..

No doubt it will reduce the unsubcribing rate. But do you guys consider it an ok practice. Or should unsubscribing be as easy as possible?
email marketing
September 15, 2010 3:36pm

We all hate being help captive. When you can’t easily find the unsubscribe link, you feel that you are being controlled. It leaves a bad feeling about the company.
Timo
September 15, 2010 6:08pm

I actually wrote about this a while back. I’ve been added to lists after ordering and later on there were technical problems that prevented me from unsubscribing. I’ve been added to lists after saying I did NOT want to be added. And I’ve faced ridiculous screens when trying to unsubscribe (only for it to not work properly). Good times!
Emil
September 15, 2010 8:33pm

If the unsubscribe link requires me to enter ant information like username/password I just close the window and click the “report spam” button in gmail. It’s so much easier and has the same effect.
Ros Hodgekiss
September 16, 2010 12:49am

Hi Dennis, we’re all for making it as easy to unsubscribe as possible. Using our preference center, you can give your subscribers the option of changing their email address, email frequency, list subscriptions and the like. :)

Timo - That’s an excellent blog post, I’ll have to pass that one on! Thank you for sharing it with us.
Doug
October 7, 2010 5:30pm

We have a problem with people never hitting unsubscribe, and just hitting SPAM with our email marketing. Our link is clear and working, and almost always we receive about 90 unsubs, and at least 20 spams. Not too many in the long haul, but it always makes me sad to see people unsubscribe or spam, even if we get more subscribers than we lose.
Annie Vranizan
October 7, 2010 7:22pm

We have a problem with people who forward the newsletter and then someone unsubscribes them from the list. This is why I think the one click unsubscribe is not the best solution. Entering your email and sending a confirmation would be better or if there is a way to ask people to confirm there unsubscribe, are you sure you want to do this.
Bart
October 7, 2010 7:25pm

I was trying to unsubscribe from GoviralNetwork without any success. First I tried to unsubscribe after logging in to their website, but that didn’t do it. Then I wrote a personal mail to one of the people at Goviral kindly asking to remove my e-mail. They said they did, but I was still receiving their daily mails. A few days later I got a new e-mail from the same person asking for my full address. Apparently they needed my full address in order to be able to unsubscribe me. WTF?

PS: Do I now get a CampaignMonitor Tee for this awesome story?
Jamus
October 8, 2010 10:37am

play.com are you listening. You are now spam. I tried to unsubscribe — I was even willing to go to the lengths of logging in AND doing whatever they asked to get them to stop sending me stuff everyday — but when they tell me the address I’ve used is not recognised ...

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