Fix your unsubscribe process
Thursday, February 15, 2007
The following sites should be ashamed of themselves. Why? Because they are breaking the cardinal rule of email marketing : give people the chance to unsubscribe and honour it.
- CD Wow! Once, about 2 years ago, in the days before iTunes serviced Ireland, I purchased a cd from them. Now they send me emails every week, in the run-up to Christmas it was at fever pitch, I was getting game and cd mailings every day. The thing is, when you click the link to unsubscribe, you are taken to the site and you have to know your user name and password to get in and edit your preferences. I am afraid to contact them to get my pw reissued. So instead I just grumble and growl every time I get one of their emails.
- Sony - Yes, you'd expect Sony to get it right. I got 2 mails off them this week alone, clicked the link to unsubscribe, diverted to the members page which had me signed in, but for the life of me I could not find any button to unsubscribe. Can you find it? Click here and a prize for you if you can!
- Dell - because they are so big and I'm guessing that their marketing department doesn't talk to their sales team, and neither talks to the IT department, and they all have their own separately managed email communications going on . . when you unsubscribe to their email, you are notified that it will take a couple of days to kick in. That's OK I can understand that. But lo! What a veritable splurge of emails I've received since then. The frequency has hotted up in a desperate bid to keep me? I don't think so. Anyway, I'm still scratching my head as to how they got a hold of me as I'm a proud mac user and will never make the switch back.
- MCD - love their work, hate their online presence. Everything about them shouts low budget - we don't care about the web and we couldn't be bothered making it work. I've been banging on for years now about how they don't have an unsubscribe on their emails, nor on their site, and they don't even have a contact us button where you can address a strongly worded email. Boo!
Before anyone suggests that I take this up with the Data Commissioner's office - I did, a long time ago and was told that since I was the only one objecting, they didn't give a flying. . . . . "Would I please put it in writing and someone would get back to me."
5 Comments:
RE: Sony
Clicked on "My Communications"
Unticked the Newsletter box.
What do I win?
Also, if you're feeling nasty, see if you can change your email address to marketing-ie@cd-wow.com and let CDWow or whoever figure out how to unsubscribe you
Clicking on my communications doesn't do anything. The nav point doesn't open. Page stays the same. Am I missing something really obvious?
LOVE your suggestion re. cd wow...gonna get on the case.
By Brightspark Dublin, at 5:22 PM
I clicked My Communications on the right hand side (though I think the link you have goes to this page, so maybe it's not ncessary) then unticked the box beside "YES, I would like to receive the My Sony newsletter".
Then I hit "Click to Save" down the very bottom, which is probably why you don't see the tick.
Though why clicking to save is neccessary is beyond me...
I give up. My preferences are already set to nada/nowt. And I saved that. But you get the prize Stu - now if you'd like to double your money, can you come up with another example of 'really they should know better' to add to this list. . . .
By Brightspark Dublin, at 6:09 PM
Well I couldn't find any in my recent mails, but on the plus side I've had a good clear out of all the junk mails I get, so thanks for that :)