Nothing says spammer like broken links and information black holes. This includes responding to an email and immediately receiving an auto response that says this email box is not viewed or a bounce back that the email address is not valid. Ditto for links to the site that are broken or have confusing and seemingly irrelevant information.

I recently attempted to unsubscribe from one major retailer’s emails in vain for more than six weeks, and I am still receiving their promotional emails. The links worked and it even told me I was unsubscribed after completing the laborious process on their site. However, obviously the process didn’t work completely as the emails keep coming to my inbox. Now that is a way to piss off a customer. Talk about the power of email. I now consider their emails to me as spam, which they are legally because they did not remove me within 10 business days.

If I had to guess, this wasn’t a malicious effort to keep me on their list, but rather the fact that, like many big (and small) companies, no one internally has probably tested the process in months. They better hope the FTC doesn’t get seeded on their lists. Internal audits are key, folks.

Additionally, be sure your unsubscribe links are in text and not just a button, given the increasing prevalence of image suppression. The customer and the law don’t necessarily care about the spirit of CAN-SPAM compliance if the letter of the law is trampled on.