Some thoughts about Zencart’s current newsletter subscription system
Today I was going through my inbox in my regular routine to clean up the spam/ads mails. It’s amazing how much spam I’ve got so far, my inbox has 3000+ unread emails after just a couple of months (these are all emails I don’t bother to read).
Some of them are not exactly spams, they are newsletters emails from various sources I subscribed to in the past. Just simply marking them as spams can be bad for these authentic news sources since email providers like Google flag the sources as spam sources based on users’ reports(BTW, if you are interested in Googles’s policy, check it here: http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=81126). So I opened these emails to find the un-subscription link, and here are the 3 cases I encountered:
- No un-subscription -> mark as spam, you DESERVE it
- un-subscription requires login, and for 99% of the cases I already forgot my login and don’t want to bother trying to remember it -> mark as spam
- un-subscription link allows me to opt out right away, they also have a comment box which I do fill in from time to time when I’m in a happy mode ^_^
So obviously, we all don’t want to be in the first and second cases, we want our emails to the customers who still want them to be delivered in the inbox, not the spam/bulk mail box. We want our users who opt out for any reason at least not filling (more) pissed off, and so I recommend you all checking your current email un-subscription system and see where does it fall in.
As a Zencart user as well as service provider, I also feel disappointed to find out Zencart’s system is falling somewhere in case 2. Perhaps it is time for the developers to fix this issue by providing an easy way to opt out?
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Hi Guys,
Excellent post as usual.
Yes, completely agree, not allowing somebody to unsubscribe easily is one of the biggest mistakes an ecommerce webmaster can make. In our experience, customers are very protective about their inbox mail, and will mark as spam faster than Clint Eastwood reaching for his gun if the email doesn’t ring a bell.
I guess to go along with this I would say there are two more essential practices to adhere to:
1. Always let the user know how they came to be mailed by you, ie , where did they subscribe?
2. Don’t drastically change your brand look from one email to the next. If a user doesn’t recognise your brand straight away, they’ll spam your newsletter – kapoww!
We use zen cart, but for emails, it is always Mailchimp.com. Well worth checking out, if not for the main benefit of complete black list security.
Thanks,
Pete