removal from email lists

[getvisible]

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ok - I have a subscription list, I make it obvious how to unsubscribe from it.

So why on earth do people reply with just "remove me" on it??

GRR - has politeness gone out the window.

I can cope with people emailing back saying they've tried to unsubscribe but can't find it (it's a big green square at the top right hand of every page). But not even say please GGRRRR!

Is it just me or do other's get it too?

[borntoloaf]

No I get this too and it is quite infuriating the level of impoliteness from some people! I wouldn't mind but my mailing list is a double opt in, user in control jobbie. I think some people are quite lazy and just want an easy way out. Fortunately it only happens about once a month and is far outwayed by the number of lovely e-mails I get. My latest rude e-mail was someone saying I should give out more stuff - I mean I'm only giving out £2000+ of stuff this month! (which also generates some rude begging letters...oh don't get me started... off for a loafing lie down)

[Guswold]

Know exactly how you feel! We used to run a fairly low circulation Newsletter, so it was easy to ensure that only the right people were on it, but even with a fairly obvious "Unsubscribe" option we still used to get the "Remove me" or "Stop sending me this". It all became too much of a hassle so we stopped producing it!

I think the spammers have just tainted everyone's views and people think that unless they threaten you you won't stop sending stuff. Sad really...

[loquax]

Pretty much standard thing you have to live with when running a website/mailing list... it's one of the crappy bits of the job.

Lost count of the number of times people have sent in stuff like "get me off this mailing list i never asked for it"... often with a few more expletives.

Life would be so much easier without users

Jason

[Mogga]

I get the odd one on one of my lists.

Do you have unsubscribe at bottom of every mailing?

[simon140]

If someone sends a remove me email send a polite reply, this should make them feel guilty for being rude and you can sleep at night knowing you have been polite. you could even set-up an autoresponder for this inviting them to stay. Everyone is a prospect.

[SillyJokes]

I got quite an abusive request to be removed from our list once so I replied all sweetness and light and the guy apologised - it was so nice of him.

I have all but given up trying trying to unsubcribe from stuff these days as it is a hiding to nothing.

[Guswold]

Actually, we had some pedant write to point out a typo in a newsletter, so I wrote back to thank them for their time in highlighting the mistake and said that we'd sacked the copywriter... we got a very nice reply back...

[renegade]

We also get odd threats and unreasonable remove me requests. Extreme politeness is our usual strategy.
Our unsubscribe farewell message also apologises for anything we might have done to upset unsubscribers just for good measure!

[getvisible]

I used to run the mailing list for Topjobs.co.uk when I got there they didn't have a proper clean function and no-one looked after responses or bounce backs.

I decided to look at the returns and there was over a million! Yep people used to reply with size 24 text saying FECK OFF (replace E with U) and various other words. Even then we used to get 40,000 replies a day. I did some investigation over the dates of subscriptions and there were loads from 1997 and 1998.

I tried telling them to actively clean the database, by if there were bounce backs consistantly for 4 weeks then they were automatically removed.

They used to sell on the fact that their registered user (job seeker) database was 800,000. But in actual fact me and the db admin team worked out that 40-50% of that db was cr@p!!

But would the rest of the marketing/sales team wanna do anything about it "it would look naff if we reduced the figure"

How much trust do we put in reported user figures when buying media/mailing lists?? I've bought mailing lists on Yahoo/Lastminute.com and wouldn't say there were not effective at all. Although niche sites work well.

But all this concern over being seen as spamming etc means that today I only a list for my own sites and don't recommend it for clients - too much hassle!

[smn2]

Hi,

I also take the 'polite reply' route - however offensive the
emails I receive are - and, usually, this results in an
apologetic reply back. When they realise that a real,
non-spammer, person has got in touch with them,
and they've sent an abusive message to 'em, I guess
they feel guilty.

This type of 'remove me' "abuse" is the norm.
It's just part of the job, so don't take it personally.

I agree that it *is* hard, sometimes. I got blamed by some person
who received an abusive text message, possibly via a
site *listed* on mine (maybe Fonetastic). He threatened
to add my email address to a spammers database (or
something similarly nasty). I couldn't protest my
innocence because the guy didn't use his real email - had
to put a BIG disclaimer on the site.

And don't even mention the number of people who want
to complain about goods they've bought online via one of
my sites...

And then there's the inevitable phone calls from a sales
representative from Touch...

Aargh, I need to get a 9-5 job quick



Steve