In Focus

How to piss off your customers

G. Simms Jenkins
Email Posted on August 13, 2007

Frequency

According to ReturnPath, 37.4 percent of readers say they receive more email than they expected when they signed up. Frequency is often a huge cause for virtual tension between the sender and recipient. It starts with clear and accurate information at the sign-up page. Companies that don’t outline how often they will send you emails or provide any guidance are destined for trouble.

By articulating the key aspects of the email (content, day sent, how often, privacy, et cetera) at the registration stage, your subscribers and you should be on the same page and off to a good start. By changing the terms of this relationship, they may feel misled or angry and hit the spam button or just ignore your emails and drag down your response rates in the process.

Example of newsletter sign-up best practices

               

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Comments

Paul Garcia
Paul Garcia August 13, 2007 at 11:00 AM

What I would like to see from the industry, particularly the email providers, is an effort to distinguish (as you mention) the difference between true junk mail, and messages you no longer wish to receive. What is needed is an "remove me" button in addition to the "Spam" button. This would reply to the sender with the "please add me to your do not e-mail list" request, or even better, it would open a form that would ask you to explain why you want to be removed, then include that information into a remove request. It's currently too convinient for users to mislabel messages as violations (spam), which causes no end of headaches for legitimate senders. They may label a purchase receipt as Junk, and then that tallies one more bad mark against your rating as a Goodmail sender or other certified mail sender. No reason to legitimately accept that rating, when it's a purchase receipt, but no distinction in the industry between Junk and unfamiliar messages. This would be tremendously valuable for companies who send mail, would educate the consumer to the difference between true junk and stuff you just don't want anymore, and it would lift some of the burden of proof that legitimate senders have now that they're complying with good email practices. It is still on the companies to handle remove requests promptly and professionally, but I, for one, am tired of getting Spam complaints from customers for purchase receipts mailed to them.