A few months ago, my wife bought some flowers through 1-800-Flowers and used my email address. Since then, I have been getting spam email from them almost every other day.
They try to follow one of my guidelines for a successful newsletter by having a “remove me” link at the bottom of the email. However, this link takes me to a page on their site stating:
If you no longer want to receive our promotional email offers, please send an email to remove@reply.1800flowers.com from the email address you would like removed.
This requires too many steps and too much time!
One Click Please
Have a “remove me”-type link in your company emails that directly unsubscribes the customer from your mailing list. Don’t make them jump through hoops to leave your mailing list.
Customers will want to unsubscribe from your mailing list for an untold number of reasons. Forcing them to take undue extra steps in that process will surely leave a bad taste in their mouth. They may no longer receive your emails but that doesn’t mean they won’t make future purchases. Don’t kick customers on they way out and they may just come back again.
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Paul D
October 20, 2005
It’s a nice idea, but even those easy remove-me links are pretty suspicious to long-time email users like myself. I know full well that a lot of spammers use those links to verify and improve their email databases. I’d prefer just to blacklist the sender.
Do all the recipients of your newsletter know and trust you? Did they ask for the newsletter originally? If so, the one-click removal is great. But if you’re sending newsletters out to people who didn’t ask for them or don’t trust you (like 1-800-Flowers apparently), you need to rethink your whole operation, because you’re more likely just to end up on spam blacklists.
Joe
October 21, 2005
Paul: I agree. The key to the one click removal is a relationship of trust with the sender. It is surely easier to click the “remove” link if you’ve done prior business with the company and remember that you’d given them your email address already.