Make unsubscribing from email easy

Consumers are increasingly hitting the "Report as Spam" button when they receive email they perceive to be irrelevant, intrusive or simply lacking in value. To avoid being reported, marketers must make unsubscribe functions obvious and up-front, say email marketing experts.

by Helen Leggatt

Traditionally, unsubscribe links are located at the end of an email message, but many are now advising marketers to put it at the beginning, somewhere recipients can quickly locate and use it.

Why? Because many email recipients, already bombarded with irrelevant messages, just can't be bothered to sift through an email to find a way of unsubscribing. Instead, they hit the "Report Spam" button and ISPs may block the sending IP address. A recent study from Silverpop, "Spam: What Consumers Really Think", found 7 out of 10 respondents thought their ISPs would block future emails if they used the spam button - and that they'd continue to use it even though it could prevent emails from that IP reaching anyone else.

And consumers don't necessarily have much faith in the unsubscribe process, even if it is easily located in an email. Many have been put off by long-winded processes in the past, or simply don't trust that companies will immediately, and completely, remove them from mailing lists.

So, don't be afraid of making your unsubscribe process obvious and easy to use. After all, if your email messages aren't hitting the mark, you need to know about it and unsubscribes are a great indicator that something might be amiss with your targeting, message, frequency or even your email format.