Obviously not looking for hyperaccurate answers, just in general, how many people tend to unsubscribe from promotional emails and how many tick the option “I never signed up for this”?
I mark any email that I didn’t intend to sign up for as spam, and I never intentionally sign up for emails from companies.
If Gmail offers a “mark as spam and unsubscribe” option, I use it.
I hope that adds just the tiniest push for Google to automatically mark these types of emails as spam and encourage companies to do better.
But then, I do this maybe once a month with Google’s own emails, so 🤷.
Not an answer to your question, but yesterday I was annoyed that I unsubscribed to an email list and there wasn’t an option to select that I never signed up for it. My email address has my first initial in it - and my user name does not stand for JulieBalls, seeing that my name isn’t Julie. However, that doesn’t stop Julie for signing me up for all sorts of shitty emails like “Hi Julie, Rand Paul needs your support to fight Facist Fauci”, “Julie, this is Reverend Fuck Knuckles and I need you to pray for Trump”, etc.
When I unsubscribe from these lists they usually make me select an option like “I’m no longer interested in this content.” I’m like “bitch, I was never interested in your trash-ass content!”
Not a lot of companies actually look at/care about that metric.
It’s more there for the providers of the email sending to identify spammy customers who are using it to hit up people without an actual business relationship to them.
I never click a box to tell them why. Fuck their analytics.
If they’re using a service to send the emails, like SendGrid or Mailchimp or something, that Unsubscribe survey is actually hosted by the email sending provider, and the more people that mark the email as spam or use the “I never signed up for this” option or similar, the worse it makes the user of the mail sending service look. If they used Sendgrid for example to send a mass email to 10k people, if more than 5% Unsubscribe or mark as spam or use the “I never signed up for this”, the company might get their account locked down by Sendgrid until there’s an investigation as to why they sent spam.
Professional marketer here, all of the unsub rates in this thread look nominal (0.1-0.2%).
Also, when we run third party distribution campaigns, a large amount of people, I can look at their hotjar journey and watch in real time their mouse movements as they download a whitepaper, then we call them and they say they never downloaded it.
It’s a mix of lying to the annoying marketing company (I get it), and just plain forgetting you did it.
I switched from Hearthstone Deck Tracker to Firestone Deck Tracker yesterday, I’m not entirely sure if I checked to see I wasn’t signing up for marketing emails, it’s that easy.
Not to mention, I can buy just about any non-EU email address i want on demand.
Also, when we run third party distribution campaigns, a large amount of people, I can look at their hotjar journey and watch in real time their mouse movements as they download a whitepaper, then we call them and they say they never downloaded it.
This shit pisses me off. If I’m forced to enter my e-mail address to download a white paper, that should not be considered consent to spam me. My company gates our whitepapers behind e-mail/personal details as well. I just put in my marketing team’s personal contact info when I have to download something from our own website. Make them eat their own shit.
thats funny but if you gave me a real name and a fake email, it gets run through data normalization and I’d likely get your real email.
If you just give me the company name, fake name and email, it’s possible that if you met our qualification procedure, we’d just dig out the best looking person at the company (head of department, procurement manager, vice president?) and start contacting them based on “institutional buying intent.”
I’m sure you don’t care, hear it all the time, and/or have no authority to change things, but this is shitty behavior on your industry’s part. Just leave people alone!
Edit: I do appreciate you sharing these insights with all of us!
I mean I’m emailing you twice a week at your work email address for 6 weeks about a product to help you with reducing costs on a certain business function, and making sure you see ads for my company when you would see ads for a different company, and someone pays me money to do it.
I dont touch any personal emails, so I don’t really consider it immoral to email you about your job at your job.
But I’m not giving you explicit consent to spam me??? You’re gating content behind me giving up an e-mail address and then pretending like that’s consent. Or worse, going and buying my e-mail from someone else. This is the part I find immoral.
And you’re being disingenuous here. You’re not “e-mailing me about my job”, you’re spamming lame brochures that I never explicitly consented to receiving. Whether you think that’s immoral or not, don’t attempt to rephrase it as if it’s some great service you’re doing me.
Edit:
I mean I’m emailing you twice a week at your work email address for 6 weeks about a product
I don’t want you to e-mail me at all, but oh. my. god. one e-mail is enough. I don’t need 11 more! Wtf?
You are giving me explicit consent, though, as payment for downloading a whitepaper. Your options are to opt out at point of sign up, or at any point after that, or, of course, not download the paper
Or if you’ve been prospected, I have to maintain a reason for emailing you in the CRM, and I’d invite you to consider the ramifications of “businesses can’t contact other businesses.” What if you need your windows cleaned? Or your fleet vehicles need to have their tires checked? Or you need a new warehouse to expand your business?
You personally in your every day role may not want that, but businesses, in general, do.
I am emailing you about your job if you are in charge of expensive ($10MM+) software applications and are interested in downsizing your compute and storage costs. Are you those things? If you are a CDAO of a billion dollar company, you probably would like to consider the product I work for.
You are giving me explicit consent, though, as payment for downloading a whitepaper.
You don’t understand the word “explicit” do you? Unless I check a box that says “please send me bullshit”, I am not explicitly giving you consent to send me bullshit. You’re also not giving me an option to pay for the whitepaper to avoid being sent bullshit.
Or if you’ve been prospected, I have to maintain a reason for emailing you in the CRM, and I’d invite you to consider the ramifications of “businesses can’t contact other businesses.”
The ramifications are that your shitty industry dies over night, and I’m okay with it.
What if you need your windows cleaned? Or your fleet vehicles need to have their tires checked? Or you need a new warehouse to expand your business?
Okay, now I’ve lost respect for you as a person. If I need any of that I’m going to ask my peers for references because I trust references way more than some jackass sending me the same e-mail 12 times over 6 weeks. If I can’t get references, them I’m going to use a search engine. Did you forget that exists?
You personally in your every day role may not want that, but businesses, in general, do.
But for all your bragging about being able to drill down and locate very specific individuals, none of you drill down and search by “this person in particular NEVER responds positively to spam”. So until you start doing that, I’m affected by your immoral practices and I get an opinion too, whether you like my opinion or not.
I am emailing you about your job if you are in charge of expensive ($10MM+) software applications and are interested in downsizing your compute and storage costs. Are you those things? If you are a CDAO of a billion dollar company, you probably would like to consider the product I work for.
We’re having a conversation about your industry in general. Not whatever goalpost you move the conversation to.
It’s clear to me from this conversation that your industry is not able to morally justify themselves and instead of owning your shitty behavior you have convinced yourselves that you’re doing people a service. You are not good people. :(
Also, I did notice you conveniently ignoring my comments on sending 12 freaking e-mails. I’d love to see you justify that nonsense.
If I’m a CDAO of a billion dollar company, I’ve already delegated that cost reduction effort to someone else and your type of unscrupulous spray and pray marketing is exactly what I’ve told them to avoid once they see it.
I work in IT, and routinely blacklist vendors, block their corporate email domains, phone number blocks, etc., once I find they are doing this targeting toward my company in hopes of landing “the right decision maker” to talk to. If your product is good and worth it, and we actually need or want it, you don’t need that type of sales/marketing tactic to get in the door.
Your game is the reason I love that my company has an email filtering platfo9rm that tags “bulk” email and I just send all of it to trash with a rule. If your email is all fancy HTML and inline CSS to make it look flashy, not a chance I’m seeing it.
I’m not an emailer, but I always mark mass marketing emails as spam because I never sign up for any email lists.
Nobody, but our company delivers extremely niche health insurance market information exclusively to paid clients. Absolutely none of our clients are getting emails they didn’t ask for and if their preferences change we have an extremely robust and granular interest system that we adjust to make sure they’re getting everything they want the way they want.
It’s a very different business from those assholes that require you to subscribe to their marketing bullshit to use their service though. In my personal life I’ve opted in to subscribing to about dozen things voluntarily… everything else gets spam marked.
