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Preventing Unsubscribes in Forwarded Emails

litmus.com

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Re: Preventing Unsubscribes in Forwarded Emails

#61

Post by nikcub »

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@…

> 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.

If you are in the USA, it is also illegal. The CAN-SPAM Act[0] specifies that you can't ask the user for more than their email address[1]:

> "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."

See also previous thread on HN[2]

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAN-SPAM_Act_of_2003

[1] Point 6: http://business.ftc.gov/documents/bus61-can-spam-act-complia...

[2] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4496688

Re: Preventing Unsubscribes in Forwarded Emails

#62

Post by dubcanada »

eli wrote: post #59

Litmus has some very clever code. When they first released their analytics feature, I reverse engineered it because I couldn't believe they could track forwards. Their "time spent reading message" was another cute hack.

They also have a print hack which is kinda cool.

But most of their hacks are not 100%

Re: Preventing Unsubscribes in Forwarded Emails

#63

Post by dubcanada »

rvkennedy wrote: post #33
ceejayoz wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You do know that email clients send an email to the email sender that gets recorded correct? For example if you press Mark as Spam in hotmail. And AOL sent you the email using MailChimp, you will show up as "spam" in MailChimp.

That also gets dinged against the sender and an account can be suspended if its too high.

TLDR; you're not using it as it was intended.

Re: Preventing Unsubscribes in Forwarded Emails

#64

Post by kintamanimatt »

eli wrote: post #56
kintamanimatt wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll admit I've clicked the unsubscribe link in a bid to stop the original sender from getting emails that they subsequently forwarded to me. Worked like a charm and prevented them from getting upset when their upset would have caused trouble.

That's... awfully passive aggressive.

I knew someone would say that, but no it's not (not even close!) because it was just a way to stop the stream of garbage without offending someone in a delicate situation. There was no component of aggression.

Re: Preventing Unsubscribes in Forwarded Emails

#65

Post by eru »

signed0 wrote: post #60
eru wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You somehow have to tell the site which people to forward to. How do you get the information there?

I was thinking the person would click on the mailto link and it would open up in their default email client. From there they could add the contacts from their contact list.

Oh, yeah, that sounds reasonable.

Re: Preventing Unsubscribes in Forwarded Emails

#66

Post by eli »

dubcanada wrote: post #62
eli wrote: post #59

Litmus has some very clever code. When they first released their analytics feature, I reverse engineered it because I couldn't believe they could track forwards. Their "time spent reading message" was another cute hack.

They also have a print hack which is kinda cool. But most of their hacks are not 100%

Agreed, at best they're useful as a relative measure (version A of the message got more reported forwards/prints/whatever than version B). I doubt the raw numbers are anywhere close to correct. Heck, it's hard enough to track "opens".

Re: Preventing Unsubscribes in Forwarded Emails

#67

Post by eli »

kintamanimatt wrote: post #64
eli wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's... awfully passive aggressive.

I knew someone would say that, but no it's not (not even close!) because it was just a way to stop the stream of garbage without offending someone in a delicate situation. There was no component of aggression.

I guess you're entitled to your opinion, but unsubscribing someone from a newsletter because you don't want them to see things they might want to forward to you is definitely passive aggressive in my book (and also not terribly nice, IMHO).

Re: Preventing Unsubscribes in Forwarded Emails

#68

Post by Tichy »

zeckalpha wrote: post #46
Tichy wrote: post #10

It seems a bit scary that forwarded mails can be changed. As a spammer, send something interesting and make it an ad when forwarded?

Sending something interesting is a hard problem.

Normal people forward silly jokes, or fake virus warnings, or fake cancer donation calls and stuff like that. Not sure it is that hard. Perhaps you could even monitor popular news sites for trending memes (for example trending YouTube videos).

Re: Preventing Unsubscribes in Forwarded Emails

#69

Post by krichman »

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@…

If I click an unsubscribe link and it doesn't instantly unsubscribe me, I don't bother with the process, I just mark all future mails from that domain as spam.
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