After we sent out our newsletter yesterday, we received an unusually large number of replies. All bar one were really positive feedback which is always so great to receive because I know Sarah and the team sweat blood to put that thing together each fortnight.
The “bar one” wasn’t actually a negative response; instead it was a bit of feedback from David Cruikshank at Farrellsoft. I’ve never met David but we’ve exchanged emails over the years and he seems like a pretty cool and smart guy. Nevertheless he unsubscribed from our newsletter because he gets too many emails. Fair enough, I’ve been doing that a lot lately myself, not because the newsletters aren’t good but because I get too much stuff and I’ve moved most of my knowledge gathering over to RSS. After clicking on the unsubscribe link in our newsletter, David then landed on the unsubscribe page on our site and clicked to confirm his unsubscription. Following that we sent him a short automated text email confirming his unsubscription and it is this email that annoyed him. David’s comment was that given that he already told us that he wanted out, why should we send him yet another email? I see his point, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I agree with it... However I think David raises an interesting point and although it’s a relatively minor issue, I care passionately about email marketing and getting it right. So I went and did some research into what others are thinking about this issue. Now it may be my poor research skills but I found nothing… hence this blog post. I know a whole bunch of smart people read this blog so I’m hoping to get some feedback on whether it was a good or bad thing to send an unsubscription confirmation email. If you have any thoughts or experiences on this please drop me a line or leave a note in the comments. Thanks again to David for his feedback; I always enjoy comments that make me question the status quo.
As I explained to him in my reply, our thinking behind this is that because our newsletter list is strictly double opt in, people on the list have definitely requested to receive the newsletter and are therefore unlikely to consider us spammy. Furthermore, it is our feeling that in many instances when someone unsubscribes through a web page, they are often left uncertain as to whether their unsubscribe request will be honoured. It is for this reason that we send this confirmation email, to provide peace of mind.
The small annoyance of receiving another email confirming that you have been unsubscribed is worth the peace of mind to me.
Posted by Jean on 2007/04/05