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
FINALLY, A SCIENTIFIC EXPLANATION FOR DICK NIXON
-
President Eisenhower had three secret meetings with aliens, former Pentagon
consultant claims (Thanks to Peter Metrinko)