So what's wrong with hitting spam?
I do keep track of if I already unsubscribed from a related list. Sometimes "unsubscribe from all" is completely ignored. Which really angers me.
If it's a random, clearly bought newsletter list from a related list, it depends on my mood. Likely spam.
Other notorious example: business A founder also founds (unrelated) business B. They just email their entire A client base with zero association to A. Big peeve of mine.
-- Edits (some more ramblings) --
My personal favorite: the "I want to receive marketing email" checkbox that rechecks if you have an unrelated issue with your transaction. Say, invalid CC details.
Still, even with these boxes, I think my standard is just: "I did business with them, I will get at least 1 marketing email. I'm ok with that. I will unsubscribe and not hear from them again." Anything past that is unacceptable.
To be clear: that's not how I think it should be. It's just how businesses, even small, genuine mom and pop shops, have been taught to operate. It's cultural. It reminds me a lot of tipping in the US. I'm vehemently anti-tipping "culture" because a standard 20% is the opposite of rewarding for performance. But I still tip at a baseline of 18%+.
It's too ingrained. And I'm not going to protest by not tipping and try to change it.
I think we've come too far unless changed by law or restaurant management. Same goes for marketing emails.
I try to be a little more reasonable here. If it's a business that required me to sign up to do business with them and didn't allow me to opt out of their marketing emails then I have no problem whatsoever clicking the Spam button. And, if their marketing emails go to a third party domain -- such as a bulk emailer -- then it goes into the Phishing bucket regardless of whether or not I opted out of their marketing emails.
What’s the deal with this?
Every now and then I forget how annoying it was last time, and I think it would be nice to donate money to some sort of charity, and then they proceed to spam me for the following year. A couple years later I forget about he experience, and the cycle begins again.
In the span of two years the following happened:
* Original Charity I actually donated money to started emailing me
* then a second local charity I did NOT donate money to
* then I began getting messages from a local political candidate who was friendly with first charity
* soon after that Another local political candidate
* Then a statewide political action committee.
At no point in that original donation flow was I ever even asked “can we email you other communications?” I presume the “we will share your email with anyone we damn well please” was baked into whatever boilerplate privacy policy existed in the background of the site they used to collect and process donation payments. Which is a whole other problem.
Is “getting out of hand” a hyperbolic reaction to how cavalier the use of mailing lists and newsletters have become when people sign up just to use a personal finance app or donate to causes?
If the unsubscribe link goes to a third party site, it's literally indistinguishable from a phishing attempt.
I'm the same way. Except for two: Staples and eBay.
Staples will send me three e-mails asking me to review a product that I ordered, but that Staples hasn't even shipped to me yet. Spam.
Recently I purchased one item from eBay using the Guest Checkout feature because I don't have an eBay account, and don't want one. Now eBay sends me e-mails all the time. In order to unsubscribe, I'm instructed to sign in to an account I don't have. Spam.
This is an extremely common annoyance of mine with Kickstarter campaigns. I back a lot of projects, and it's insane how many creators abuse the "project updates" system to promote other projects, often totally unrelated and from totally different creators. They're clearly getting paid for these promotions. I can't just "unsubscribe" from the updates because I do need to be aware of "real" updates that may require my input/action.
And many apps that rely on push-notifications for their core functionality are polluting these streams with ads. Uber basically admits this: they send ride updates by sms because they know people turn off their ad-filled push notifications.
My town is also using its covid-emergency-updates sms system to advertise local composting.
This is becoming an acceptable practice, and it seems impossible to filter the cruft.
They get a mail saying one more spam from them and I will ensure I never buy anything they make again, add them to blacklists and tell other people they are spammers.
They tend to go the attack/whine route about being a struggling entrepreneur, and I try to educate. Of the ones who actually engage, about 1/3 seem to come around, which I consider a pretty good rate. (I follow through with the rest. They're just shithead spammers.)
The worst for me is if you donate to one political campaign, once, you will be on every mailing list for every single candidate in that party for every single election; in every single country, state, county, province, parish, district, or city; forever.
I know that's how politics works today, but, Jesus, the #1 thing making me not want to participate in one of the major parties is this.
I do consider it spam, unless the email is actually about a previous transaction. I don't equate doing a transaction with a business with permission for them to bother me about something unrelated.
I have a big problem with this and never know what to do.
Person buys my course after following newsletters for a while. All good.
I put them on a followup list that helps guide them through the course and keep them on track. All good.
They get a newsletter they don’t like and unsubscribe.
Now they stop getting followup guidance emails for the course. This is a problem. Almost certain not what they wanted to happen either. But okay I honor it.
A while later I make a huge update to the course or migrate to a new platform. I need to tell every buyer that their account is moving. But some have unsubscribed from all emails.
Do I add them back or not?
This might be the ex-marketer coming out in me, but surely the course guidance emails could be considered transactional to the service and be honoured by a different opt-in/out policy to the newsletter?
> I need to tell every buyer that their account is moving
Again, this use case isn't marketing, and should very much be allowed as a requirement to keep people informed about the use of their data. In the same way a "change password" email is allowed to be sent.
That’s the tricky part that most “ew email is spam” folk forget. The definition of “all” can be super nuanced and most people don’t think about it.
It does. But the user clicked "No I want to unsubscribe all"
- Unsub from this marketing topic.
- Unsub from all marketing mails. You will continue to receive paid course content; to terminate see [account deletion request page].
On the account deletion page, make it clear that they'll lose out on further paid content, don't come back crying, blah blah.
Do you really want to open yourself up to being banned by your new platform, or facing a lawsuit over pennies in revenue?
Imagine being grumpy at a Starbucks barista once and now you can’t get Starbucks again ever anywhere.
Or a better example: You opted out of email now you can’t reset your password. Sorry can’t email you the link.
They unsub'd all meaning "no more emails ever" as you said. How do I tell them the stuff moved if they don't want to be contacted ever again ever?
Marking them as spam messes with Github's deliverability to all GMail users and may prevent you from getting notifications in your inbox in the future if you decide to sign up again.
Additionally most reputable email senders have a "feedback loop" set up with Google, Hotmail, and Yahoo where clicking that Report Spam button actually passes your email address back to the sender's email system. For example if you click Report Spam on one of our email newsletters in GMail, we will flag your record in our database and not send you any more messages even if you specifically sign up for a newsletter in the future. (Please don't test this.)
Now if it's unsolicited stuff -- SPAM -- no problem. But if it's a list you once signed up for and now no longer want, you're telling google -- for everyone -- that mail like that is spam. Even people who signed up for it (like you did) and still want it. That's unfair to the company and unfair to all those other people too.
But someone randomly blasting you with crap as is the usual case (and I includes that company you once did business with and who signed you up without your permission): that's what the spam button is for.
If you unsubscribe you're saying that you're no longer interested in the list, you see the merit but don't want to receive it any more for whatever reason.
If you hit spam you're saying this email should never have come to me, or I don't want to expend the effort to stop it from coming to me.
If the sender makes unsubscribing as easy as hitting spam (by making sure the Gmail unsub button works for example) then they make it more likely for their recipients to send the appropriate feedback - ie not hit the spam button.
If people start unsubscribing by hitting spam, then those users who still want to receive the mailing may have to search for it in their spam boxes.
While many senders will remove people who hit spam on their emails but not all do it. After a while, emails could be getting past the spam filter again.
Unsubscribing is usually more effective at stopping unwanted emails from any semi legitimate company as they are required by law to honor it.
If you want double protection, you can always do both.
Whereas mine is pretty reliably never sending false positives to my spam folder. Fastmail wins again.
The engagement and conversion rate on email is so low that the volume continually increases to convert further.
Really? Ignoring the "Spam" folder (which I never check), I get way less junk email than snail mail. And the snail mail is reliably 95% unsolicited garbage.
To be fair, Fastmail lets you set rules to route stuff to Junk, whereas USPS actively facilitates routing garbage to your mailbox [0].
I get tons of email, a lot of it being spam. I've had my email address for well over a decade.
> rarely provide our physical address
This. We order lots of stuff online, and I'd guess our info has been resold to 3rd parties many times. I provide a PO box whenever possible, but if something is being shipped...
Not all messages that get put into the spam folder are actually spam. There’s a wide variety of emails that aren’t spam, but also aren’t necessarily wanted anymore either. Those are the ones this article is focusing on. Make it easy for your readers to unsubscribe so they don’t call you spam.