RANT ALERT: Unsubscribe Me "Pleas"

RANT ALERT!

I am a huge believer in e-mail marketing.  In fact, we regularly suggest e-mail newsletters as a marketing tactic for our clients and believe that marketing using e-mail is a key and growing component of the public relations mix.  It enables a company to keep in contact with its clients and customers and is a wonderful and inexpensive way to offer promotions.

However, I remain shocked that companies still use e-mail marketing services that don't enable one to easily unsubscribe.  Further, how come one-click unsubscribing hasn't become an industry standard? 

I bring this up because I decided to clear my inbox a bit this morning from some of its clutter.  I have no use for South Beach party invitations and one can only withstand a certain amount of social media seminar invitations. 

I will give the industry a little bit of credit.  I would say half of the of the 20 or so lists I removed myself from had simple unsubscribe systems.  But there were still others that asked me to re-enter my e-mail address (which is crazy) and still others made it nearly impossible.

Back to the one-click issue...having to re-enter your e-mail address or go through a bunch of steps to unsubscribe is one of the marketing industry's biggest annoyances -- right up there with junk-mail and (Gasp) telemarketing. 

Maybe I need to start reading the mass e-mails I get from the direct marketing association and make a plea there!  Ha.

RANT OVER

--John


www.miamipublicrelations.com