Is Opt-In Permanent?

Email

from the perishable-commodity dept

Lazy email marketers (of the legitimate kind) often seem to think that just getting someone’s email address is the most important part of the relationship, and once they have that, they can bombard them with email forever. However, this is one of the reasons why many people are considering email lists they’ve signed up for as spam. This article points out that permission to receive email marketing messages is a “perishable commodity” and permission should be renewed fairly often. To most (lazy) marketers, the idea seems awful: why would they ever want to make it extra easy for someone to opt-out? However, for those who continue to opt-in, they’re obviously much more loyal. Of course, the article doesn’t quite explain how this process works. If someone is forced to keep “opting-in”, they could get annoyed as well (“I’ve already opted in! Stop asking me!”). The easiest thing is to at least give the user options to adjust what they’re getting and how often. Update: Interesting timing… just a little while after posting this story, I happened to open up an email folder of emails I’ve subscribed to, but never read any more. I almost never look at the emails in there. However, the latest one had the subject “Good-bye, farewell, and amen,” and was from CNET. The message reads: “We have noticed it’s been a while since you last clicked within this newsletter, and wanted to make sure you’d like to continue receiving it. We know that unwanted e-mail can be a real headache, so if you still want to continue to receive this e-mail, please click on the link below.” I’m quite impressed. It fits perfectly with what I wrote above. They are asking for permission again, but they’re doing it in a smart way – they’re only doing it because they’ve noticed I never click on links in that particular newsletter, and they’re then assuming that I’m opting out, unless I take specific action to opt-in.