The Cost of an Email Unsubscribe | Hacker News Reader

The Cost of an Email Unsubscribe

custora.com

39 pointspospischil33 comments

I love when you get things like "unsubscribing costs U.S. retailers about $5.8 billion per year.

So if you stopped people unsubscribing $5.8 billion more would be spent on retail? No, people have, roughly, a fixed amount to spend, stopping them unsubscribing isn't going to give them more money.

If that figure were true, 5.8 bil less would be spent in other areas. But let's face it, this figure is pulled from someone's arse.

OK, there's a bubble of apps claiming to do this at the moment, but the marketing just gets more and more cheesy. And if we find it cheesy, are we going to trust these folks with our marketing?

The silly thing is here, having looked at their app, it's looks reasonably good, given its age.

The presentation tells us "First impressions matter."

Looks like decent tech, let by some awful marketing. Now if only that had been done on purpose to prove a point...

You mean the awful marketing that led you to the product? That awful marketing? Is that the awful marketing you're referring to?

I just want to clarify that the awful marketing you are speaking of is the one that caused you to look at the product...

all publicity is good publicity

..except for when its not.

Yes. The awful marketing that throws around obviously bogus numbers, leading me to wonder what else they'd do in a slipshod manner.

So yeah, I looked at the page. Congrats and all that.

OP here -- the numbers are in no way bogus, all sourcing information and methodologies are listed on the page itself (see the bottom left * on each 'slide').

Would love to understand what gave you that impression, as we work hard to build content like this, and hate to see it shrugged off.

unsubscribing costs U.S. retailers about $5.8 billion per year

Utter nonsense.

/end thread

The telling part is that they say...

"Custora's research shows that stores on average lose roughly 1.75% of revenue every year due to unsubscribes."

This is remarkably similar (in amount) to loss through shrinkage at bricks and mortar stores, which is estimated at 1.7% (according to one source I bothered to find) [1] - but while retailers take steps to reduce shrinkage, there is a cost/benefit balance in play and a certain amount is inevitable, maybe the same is true of unsubscribe

I'm more curious about how that 1.75% compares from other sources of lost revenue; how does it compare to the cost of processing returns, or fraud, or just basic transaction costs, &c?

Maybe it's significant, maybe it's noise, but without anything to compare it to, who knows

[1] http://www.jrrobertssecurity.com/security-news/security-crim...

Maybe it's retconning loss figures to a model they already have. If they can fit online expectations to meatspace loss figures, then they don't have to change their models.

Hopefully, the hyperbole communicated the intent of a good-natured ribbing...

> So if you stopped people unsubscribing $5.8 billion more would be spent on retail? No, people have, roughly, a fixed amount to spend, stopping them unsubscribing isn't going to give them more money.

Yep. One retailer's loss is another retailer's gain.

The cheesiness is a sing of (impending) market saturation. The race to the bottom is a facet of competition.

guys, don't be confused. that `sing` is supposed to be `sign`

whoops, thanks!

Sounds a bit like how Hollywood/recording industry equates piracy with theft.

I thought it was going to tell me the cost of clicking unsubscribe, followed by the forgot my password dance to log in to my "subscription preferences" to turn off the emails being sent to me.

Or having to fill out the email address that received the email (change back to my email client, check the headers), something that they could fill in for me.

Or having to figure out that the unsubscribe link is two shades of grey darker than the rest of the email and is almost unnoticeable...

Or even worse, the unsubscribe link is only in the HTML portion of the email, but not in the text portion of the email.

Other times the unsubscribe button is an image ... and if you don't download images willy-nilly from random servers when you get email you can't see it, and thus have no idea there is a way to unsubscribe.

I could go on, email is starting to get more and more frustrating and I have gotten to a point that I simply don't care anymore. I will press the junk button in Google Mail or in my mail client, and in the future I will not receive messages from that company. Does stuff get caught because of that, which shouldn't get caught? Sure, stuff like password reset emails, or billing renewal reminders, but overall I am sick and tired of every little thing I do online causing me to receive an email.

I miss the days when email was plain text.

I've started to filter off any email that has the word 'unsubscribe' in the body to my spam folder.

First, the page is cut off on Safari on an iPad. But I can get the gist of it.

More to the point, it's the piracy argument all over again. If I unsubscribe from a retailer's list, I wasn't going to buy anything from their mailings anyway. It's apparent that I had no intention of reading them. They're missing out on nothing.

But maybe I'll buy something in the future, who knows? If it was an otherwise pleasant experience I'll keep them in mind. When I unsubscribe, I hold no ill will toward the sender if they make it a one-click, easy unsubscribe. Make it a pain to unsubscribe, however, and get nothing in the future.

Take Musician's Friend as a prime example. My first and only purchase from them was a Fender Greta amp (highly recommended, BTW). I gave them (my gmail alias)+musiciansfriend@gmail.com. They took it. They also spam me every other day. Fine, I'll unsubscribe. But the unsubscribe form's regex rejects "+" and tells me the address is invalid. Too bad for you, MF, as I'll just filter your mail, the paper catalog that I didn't ask for will go straight to recycling without ever entering the house, and I'll bad-mouth you to anyone that asks. That's because post-sale MF came across as obnoxious.

I've come to expect being added to marketing lists after having a transaction with any business. (That doesn't mean I like it though, and it's one additional hassle that keeps me from shopping at new enterprises.) I agree, if you make it easy to unsubscribe, no ill will.

What is most irritating is those businesses that I have already unsubscribed from, or clicked a box saying I didn't want to be contacted, who, months later, start a new list and make the default subscribers everyone who has ever had any business with the company. Saying I don't want to get your marketing emails doesn't mean I don't want them until you invent a new category of marketing; it means I don't want them ever.

It's a lack of respect and it pisses me off.

The master at that is Logitech. Every six months or so they decide to start new irrelevant lists adding in every customer they have ever had for any product.

My other pet peeve is that unsubscribe is one click. Anything more is hostile, especially those that want you to login or perform similar tricks.

I totally agree with these points. Especially regarding unsubscribe. For whatever reason a LOT of online business seem to think, "Hey if we make it a pain in the ass to unsubscribe they'll just keep reading our mailings." This is wrong and, at least in the case of anyone I've talked to, just fosters ill-will and eliminates any possibility of retaining that customer.

I've resigned myself to automatically being signed up even though I think it's a shady business practice. These mailing lists should always be opt-in not opt-out. I shouldn't have to scour the checkout page to find the box I need to click that says, "No thanks, I don't want crap in my inbox every day."

Regarding the iPad thing, I rather dislike anything web-oriented, or anything for that matter, that requires I have a specific resolution. I keep my browser as a half-screen always and generally speaking if I have to resize it to read content I just don't bother.

Lastly, I sort of disagree with the use of the word cost in this context. This isn't really a cost, at least not in the way I think of the word cost. Unless they're paying out this money for infrastructure, wages, etc. to process unsubscribes it's not a cost.

I found the interface annoying. Here's a rough copy of the text:

— CUSTORA PRESENTS — Clive AND THE Unsubscribe (OR, WHAT'S COSTING RETAILERS $5.8 BILLION EACH YEAR)

Clive loves shopping online From soaps to socks to jellyfish food, if he can think of it, it's only a few clicks away from his doorstep. It's miraculous, if you think about it. Along with 77% of shoppers, Clive actually prefers to receive emails from online retailers more than any other medium. It's an easy way for him to stay in touch with his favorite brands, discover new things, and take advantage of some great deals. Unfortunately, Clive is also one of those people who barely reads marketing emails.

50%* of people admit to never or almost never reading emails from retailers.

It's understandable, given people receive an average of 147 emails* per day. That's a lot to sort through. And sometimes, if he gets a bad vibe, Clive will unsubscribe.

And here's what happens: In fact, each year, "unsubscribes" cost U.S. retailers an estimated $ 5.8 Billion*. Yikes. That's $111 Million per week. We looked into when and why people unsubscribe, and discovered some interesting things.

5% of people unsubscribe within the first week of subscribing

6.5% within the first month

And 8.5% within the first three months

We also asked people to list their most common reasons for unsubscribing.

"Too frequent" Listed by 67% of people

"Too generic, not personalized" Listed by 63% of people

"Not relevant" Listed by 60% of people

"I hardly buy anything from them" Listed by 55% of people

So, back to Clive. How do you keep him "subscribed"?

Email works. Just keep it classy. Email's a really great way for retailers to stay in touch with millions of people, and customers actually prefer it over other direct mediums. The more tailored, the better.

First impressions matter. Those first few emails can make or break a relationship with a new customer, so make them count.

Timing + relevancy = happier customers It's all about delivering the right message to the right person at the right time. Not too much, and not so little that they forget why they love you.

We believe online marketing can be a whole lot better, and we're getting started with email.

EVERY CUSTOMER HAS A STORY. MAKE THE MOST OF IT.

You'd better hope that I unsubscribe. Because that's just a signal to you that I don't want what you're sending.

If I get really pissed off, I will go look up what else you've sent. Who else is complaining. Where you're hosted. How you got my address.

And then I start complaining. Not to you. To your webhosting company. To your email hoster. To your upstream network vendors. All of them have AUPs that say "you won't use our service to send spam".

And on a bad day for you, they listen. They see the complaint from me. They actually investigate. And maybe my complaint is the one that suggests to them that you aren't paying enough to be worth this aggravation.

Don't send spam. If you're going to send me email, we had better have an existing relationship where I actually handed you my email address and positively clicked on "Please send me email about stuff you think is going to interest me", or you had best be sending me a personal email written by a person expressly to me about a specific subject.

The only opt-in email marketing I've ever been glad to receive, and not soon unsubscribed from, are those that presented an exceptional offer in the very first mailing.

It seems like such an obvious engagement tactic, I'm surprised so many companies don't employ it.

(That said, those same emails will piss me off more than anything else if I've JUST purchased the product for full price. Another seemingly obvious fail.)

From where does the cost come? Magic? Because it is nowhere to be seen.

For sources of the numbers, click on the link in the lower left of the page, and a methodologies window will appear.

Well, for retailers specifically, the only one I actually read is Newegg. That's because, not infrequently, I've gotten a really good deal on one of their limited-time "Shellshockers". Just got a 180GB Intel 330 SSD for $100, for instance.

Why would I bother reading an email, and thus engaging your brand when _you_ want me to, if you're not going to offer me something I can't get by visiting your website when _I_ want to?

I bet the most successful retailer email campaigns are those that actually throw a bone, even if it's a little one like my new SSD, to their customers every once in a while.

I couldn't care less what unsubscribes are costing retailers. Obviously it's not enough. The better question is what are subscribes costing consumers? How much of our time is wasted sifting through spam marketing emails?

OT: the site is hardly readable on ipad

Ok, so overlooking the horrible mobile-hostile design of this site, the logic here is delusional. An unsubscribe==better value to the business because at the end of the day you have a mailing list of customers interests in your messaging, and these are the people likely to be buying anyways. Plus, that's one less e-mail you have to pay for distribution on. wtf?!?

People receive on average 147 emails a day? 77% wants a newsletter?

Somebody gotta get his facts right.

Is it bad that I'm as interested in the facts on this page as the graphic design? I had no idea Custora had killer designers onboard.

I like the presentation. Very cool js slideshow.

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