It’s Not You, It’s Me
Posted by Dave McCue on December 11th, 2008
A typical foray into my personal email account involves one strategy and one strategy only; deletion with reckless abandon:
“10% off…” – Get back to me when it’s 50. Delete!
“Fwd:…” - No time for forwards. Delete!
And so it goes—sometimes even emails from my mother accidentally get caught up in the carnage.
But today I actually took a moment and looked at the many unread email messages waiting for me, all boldfaced and hoping against hope that today would be the day, and it occurred to me; at one point, I really did ask for all of these.
That email about getting my credit report sure looked spammy, but I was the fool who signed up on one of those free credit websites a few years back out of curiosity (tip: they aren’t free). Did I really ask to receive email updates from a site that sold posters? Yes, upon further reflection, I did—because I used to give really lame Christmas presents.
Signing up for emails has become a very “shrug-and-move-on” sort of transaction, similar to swiping a debit card to make purchases. Not until the inbox begins to reach the brim (or the bank statement arrives) does it become clear how quickly such things add up.
I don’t think I’m much different from the typical email user in this regard, which is why the issue of crowded inboxes is such a challenge to overcome for email marketers. While I—unlike many email users—only use the “Mark as SPAM” button in obvious cases of abuse, I do tend to delete messages in bulk rather than go through the unsubscribe process for each one. Somewhere out there, an email marketer is racking his/her brain trying to figure out why I haven’t been opening the emails I’ve been receiving for so long.
Of course, this is where the issue of list cleansing comes into play. Am I currently a source of revenue for these people? No. Was I at one point? Yes. Taking me off their list, when I could theoretically be thiiiiis close to making my next purchase, is a tough call in light of how inexpensive it has been to keep in contact with me all this time.
Much like the sign-up process, deleting unread messages rather than unsubscribing is the type of action I (and many other email subscribers) perform without much thought. But if, one day, I received a “We Haven’t Heard From You in Awhile” message, it would likely flip the switch in my head reminding me that I don’t want this email, and I can end this wicked game once and for all by taking a few extra seconds to unsubscribe.
By pushing me to take action in order to stay on their mailing lists, these marketers would only risk losing an uninterested subscriber—increasing their open and click-thru rates in the process—and my mother’s next email might go unscathed. Everybody wins.
