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Preventing Unsubscribes in Forwarded Emails

litmus.com

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Re: Preventing Unsubscribes in Forwarded Emails

#31

Post by monochromatic »

B-Con wrote: post #30
gkoberger wrote: post #25

Article aside, it's much better to have a one-click unsubscribe that just works. It's an edge case that someone will unsubscribe from someone else's mailing list or click it by mistake, so making every single person (99% who are unsubscribing on purpose) confirm, log in, enter their address or receive a confirmation is an infuriating waste of time. The best way to mitigate this is a simple "You unsubscribed whatever@…

What if it's malicious? Eg, "I hate your political ideology. I'll unsubscribe you from the site you forwarded me an article from." I'm sure that kind of threat is minimal and easily corrected, but the OP's suggestion of hiding it somewhat addresses that. It doesn't eliminate the threat of course, but it doesn't put it under their nose.

A confirmation email with an "undo" link fixes that problem as well.

Re: Preventing Unsubscribes in Forwarded Emails

#32

Post by ajanuary »

gkoberger wrote: post #25

Article aside, it's much better to have a one-click unsubscribe that just works. It's an edge case that someone will unsubscribe from someone else's mailing list or click it by mistake, so making every single person (99% who are unsubscribing on purpose) confirm, log in, enter their address or receive a confirmation is an infuriating waste of time. The best way to mitigate this is a simple "You unsubscribed whatever@…

> I've really been hoping GMail and other clients would accept a URL in email headers that would handle unsubscribe, so they could add a button to the UI.

GMail offers to unsubscribe you if you mark something as spam and it's able to detect how to unsubscribe.

It reduces the number of buttons on the screen, which is a good thing, but I feel bad about potentially harming a companies credibility by clicking spam as a shortcut to unsubscribe if Google can't figure out how to unsubscribe.

Re: Preventing Unsubscribes in Forwarded Emails

#33

Post by rvkennedy »

ceejayoz wrote: post #21
milkshakes wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is possibly in violation of CAN-SPAM: You can’t charge a fee, require the recipient to give you any personally identifying information beyond an email address, or make the recipient take any step other than sending a reply email or visiting a single page on an Internet website as a condition for honoring an opt-out request. [1] [1] http://business.ftc.gov/documents/bus61-can-spam-act-complia...

I think that's an overly narrow interpretation of "visiting a single page". I've seen very prominent providers who've definitely been around long enough to know the legalities (the hard way) use the "enter your e-mail address" approach.

When I click "unsubscribe", I expect to be unsubscribed. If I just get a page that invites me to enter my email, which the page should know already, I find it's easier, and vastly more satisfying, just to mark the mail as spam.

Re: Preventing Unsubscribes in Forwarded Emails

#34

Post by jlgreco »

andrewreds wrote: post #23
jlgreco wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Particularly when the subscribed user has several email accounts that all forward to another. It is a pain in the ass to click back and figure out exactly which address something came from.

Would this really be a problem? If you have a look at the article, linked from the article, they are hiding the un-subscribe link when the link is inside quotes. For me, the emails that get forwarded to different accounts (due to email rules), don't have quotes, so the link will show. But pressing the forward button will put quotes around the entire email, so the link won't be shown. In saying that, there are probabl…

I don't know if it is a problem with their system, but it has been an issue numerous times with other systems for me.

I don't see how their system would solve the issue that occurs with this system: "inputting your email address and then pressing an ubsubscribe button" If I have to input my email address, I have to determine which email address I have to input.

Re: Preventing Unsubscribes in Forwarded Emails

#35

Post by jspaur »

gkoberger wrote: post #25

Article aside, it's much better to have a one-click unsubscribe that just works. It's an edge case that someone will unsubscribe from someone else's mailing list or click it by mistake, so making every single person (99% who are unsubscribing on purpose) confirm, log in, enter their address or receive a confirmation is an infuriating waste of time. The best way to mitigate this is a simple "You unsubscribed whatever@…

They do in a way, the 'List-Unsubscribe' header: https://support.google.com/mail/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answ...

Appears to work with Outlook.com/Hotmail, and Gmail. Not sure about Yahoo, but those two alone cover a pretty big group.

Re: Preventing Unsubscribes in Forwarded Emails

#36

Post by matt_heimer »

raldi wrote: post #8

How does this work?

Read here: http://jonathan-kim.com/2011/programmatically-customizing-a-...

Basically most e-mail clients change the dom structure in some way when you forward an email (like wrapping the original in a div). Write some CSS rules that require an unmodified structure to show the unsubscribe button.

Re: Preventing Unsubscribes in Forwarded Emails

#37

Post by mikegreco »

monochromatic wrote: post #31
B-Con wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if it's malicious? Eg, "I hate your political ideology. I'll unsubscribe you from the site you forwarded me an article from." I'm sure that kind of threat is minimal and easily corrected, but the OP's suggestion of hiding it somewhat addresses that. It doesn't eliminate the threat of course, but it doesn't put it under their nose.

A confirmation email with an "undo" link fixes that problem as well.

This seems like an extreme edge case as far as problems go, and can be absolutely infuriating when a user doesn't want to get mailed anymore.

Re: Preventing Unsubscribes in Forwarded Emails

#38

Post by elliotanderson »

alxndresp wrote: post #3

Wouldn't requiring inputting your email address and then pressing an ubsubscribe button work? That way when the forwarded user tries to unsubscribe, they know they aren't subscribed.

Even working on the copy text would decrease accidental unsubscribes.

Something as simple as "This email was sent to somebody@example.org, if you are this person click here to unsubscribe somebody@example.org" then display the email address again prominently on the unsub page

Re: Preventing Unsubscribes in Forwarded Emails

#40

Post by eru »

signed0 wrote: post #28

What if instead one just focused on lowering the amount of times someone forwards an email containing an unsubscribe link. Perhaps a "send to a friend" link in the email would help?

But I like my email client (say gmail), I don't want to use someone else's half-baked solution. And especially the highly engaged users would have to copy-and-paste the 85 email addresses they forward to.
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