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Spy pixels in emails 'have become endemic'

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Spy pixels in emails 'have become endemic'

#231

Post by mariusor »

pc86 wrote: post #223
mariusor wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're supposed to stop sending emails to someone who's not interacting with them The only way that this justification makes sense to me is if you mail people that didn't explicitly subscribe to your newsletter in the first place. If that's the case, I think that the problem lies elsewhere. An email is meant to be read, that's it. Any other interaction a user will have with it that is still under your concern is if…

That may be how you want it to be, but it doesn't reflect reality. If you consistently have extremely low open rates (e.g. you send to a lot of people who aren't opening) your risk of being marked as spam increases. The only way to avoid this is to periodically cull your list of people who haven't opened in some amount of time.

I can understand that, but I see a couple of suggestions in the thread that are more considerate than tracking pixels. Tracking external clicks, double confirmation, etc.

I consume most of my email in plain text format. Like me there are others. Your solution is not working for us.

Re: Spy pixels in emails 'have become endemic'

#232

Post by eplanit »

relix wrote: post #50

If you're running a mail newsletter, this tracking is pretty important. You're supposed to stop sending emails to someone who's not interacting with them, or you get an extra point towards being flagged as spam. Since people are already weary of clicking the unsubscribe link and instead casually mark everything as spam, every little bit towards keeping your reputation counts. It's a damned if you do, damned if you do…

"If you're running a mail newsletter, this tracking is pretty important. You're supposed to stop sending emails to someone who's not interacting with them, or you get an extra point towards being flagged as spam."

How about measuring interaction as the user doing something like logging into your site, buying a product, posting a comment on your site, sending you an e-mail -- those are actual interactions. By not counting simply opening the e-mail as interaction, you can satisfy your worries about bothering people without spying on them. You can use the lack of logins or e-mails from the user as an indication of disinterest.

The profit incentive that's built-in via collection of user data makes any "it's for the user's best interest" argument questionable.

Re: Spy pixels in emails 'have become endemic'

#233

Post by kergonath »

jjulius wrote: post #229
Nextgrid wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why people would be wary of clicking the unsubscribe link on something they explicitly subscribed to in the first place. I mean, they trusted you enough to give you their email address to subscribe in the first place, right? The only scenario I can think of is when people didn't intentionally subscribe or were coerced into subscribing and those newsletters can go to hell and fully deserve to be marked as…

>I'm not sure why people would be wary of clicking the unsubscribe link on something they explicitly subscribed to in the first place. I mean, they trusted you enough to give you their email address to subscribe in the first place, right? You're assuming that they willingly signed up for it and weren't added to the list because of someone selling their data to another marketer, a dark UX pattern tricking them into si…

> those newsletters can go to hell and fully deserve to be marked as spam.

I tend to agree. Also, newsletter that try to track me with invisible pixels can go to hell, too.

Re: Spy pixels in emails 'have become endemic'

#235

Post by mint2 »

relix wrote: post #65
panic wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does this mean I’ll be automatically unsubscribed from a mailing list if my mail client doesn’t load the tracking pixel? How long does this take to happen?

Yes, if that newsletter is using best practices. The recommended period is 90 days I believe, but you can get send an email asking if you're still interested (and in that email, there will be a link you should click if you want to stay subscribed). You may have had this happen before and probably thought that was just a scammy way to get you to click a link, but in fact it's completely legit.

But email clients let you set “do not load remote images”. I set it for the Mac app. How can a best practice be one that conflicts with easily toggled options and not weird settings.

Re: Spy pixels in emails 'have become endemic'

#236

Post by bogidon »

dugmartin wrote: post #225
karaterobot wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A trivial point, but I don't see that anyone's made it yet: one reason it's easier to report spam than to unsubscribe is that the UX for reporting spam is a lot better in Gmail. If I want to politely unsubscribe from a newsletter I have to: switch from the keyboard to the mouse, hunt for the link in the email and click it, switch contexts to the browser tab it opens, hunt for the primary action on the page, figure ou…

If the newsletter uses a List-Unsubscribe header gmail will add a little unsubscribe button at the top of the email. It shows up in maybe 25% of the newsletters I receive.

CAN-SPAM should be extended to make it required for commercial mail to add this header.

Re: Spy pixels in emails 'have become endemic'

#237

Post by meowster »

beckingz wrote: post #216
relix wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe it's because even though most newsletters are acting 100% legit (it would be pretty hard to keep going if not), there's always a few that would act like jerks and not actually unsubscribe you, or make you jump through extra hoops. Even if that's only 5% of the newsletters, those are the times that you as the reader would remember happening. A smooth unsubscribe experience is not memorable. It's worse becaus…

And then there are services that require you to log in to unsubscribe...

I've only run into that once personally. It was a major US business that I signed up with. It violated the CAN-SPAM law, so I marked it as spam.

I'm not sorry if I threw anyone's metrics off, they broke the law, they spammed me, it's on them.

Re: Spy pixels in emails 'have become endemic'

#238

Post by bberenberg »

eplanit wrote: post #232
relix wrote: post #50

If you're running a mail newsletter, this tracking is pretty important. You're supposed to stop sending emails to someone who's not interacting with them, or you get an extra point towards being flagged as spam. Since people are already weary of clicking the unsubscribe link and instead casually mark everything as spam, every little bit towards keeping your reputation counts. It's a damned if you do, damned if you do…

"If you're running a mail newsletter, this tracking is pretty important. You're supposed to stop sending emails to someone who's not interacting with them, or you get an extra point towards being flagged as spam." How about measuring interaction as the user doing something like logging into your site, buying a product, posting a comment on your site, sending you an e-mail -- those are actual interactions. By not coun…

The product of parent is literally the newsletter.

Re: Spy pixels in emails 'have become endemic'

#239

Post by meowster »

plorg wrote: post #203
Nextgrid wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why people would be wary of clicking the unsubscribe link on something they explicitly subscribed to in the first place. I mean, they trusted you enough to give you their email address to subscribe in the first place, right? The only scenario I can think of is when people didn't intentionally subscribe or were coerced into subscribing and those newsletters can go to hell and fully deserve to be marked as…

I keep a pretty tidy inbox by studiously unsubscribing from advertorial mail as soon as I receive it. I make no exceptions. Consequentially, it's fairly easy to notice when an unsubscribe action didn't work. I've noticed a few times that a company I have unsubscribed from years ago will suddenly start sending me mail again. Usually I'll just re-unsubscribe and they'll go away again. I've also had it several times tha…

The resending emails after a few years after I unsubscribed happened to me once. I marked it as spam, and it still shows up in my spam folder. It seems like a noble company, but as far as I can tell, they broke US law while spamming me, so I will not lose any sleep over it.

Re: Spy pixels in emails 'have become endemic'

#240

Post by tweetle_beetle »

eplanit wrote: post #232
relix wrote: post #50

If you're running a mail newsletter, this tracking is pretty important. You're supposed to stop sending emails to someone who's not interacting with them, or you get an extra point towards being flagged as spam. Since people are already weary of clicking the unsubscribe link and instead casually mark everything as spam, every little bit towards keeping your reputation counts. It's a damned if you do, damned if you do…

"If you're running a mail newsletter, this tracking is pretty important. You're supposed to stop sending emails to someone who's not interacting with them, or you get an extra point towards being flagged as spam." How about measuring interaction as the user doing something like logging into your site, buying a product, posting a comment on your site, sending you an e-mail -- those are actual interactions. By not coun…

The nature of an email newsletter which aggregates third party content is that the only target goal is something opening your email and then enjoying the content enough to click to read more about it.

I don't necessarily like the model, but if this is your business model, then there's nothing else that can be measured to monitor ongoing success apart from:

- how many new users signed up

- how many existing users unsubscribed (or marked as spam)

It's a tough ask getting sponsors based on those two metrics alone.

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