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One of the toughest issues in our business is when consumers don't simply unsubscribe from emails: they flag them as spam. That one difference between the unsubscribe link and the Report as Spam button can be hellish on ESPs as you cannot control what users on the other end of a 100% legitimate marketing campaign will do. Everything up to the end result is in your hands, but it's that final decision that will ultimately make or break your reputation and turn a whitelist into black quite quickly.
Manchester Monarchs ticketmaster Jason Bergeron has been learning quite a bit since moving the team over to SendLabs and sent me along this piece in DMNews.com today. It's the findings from a study that shows more and more consumers are simply reporting emails as spam for no real reason other than frequency or lack of interest. A telling pullout: "Surprisingly, 47% of respondents believe by hitting the “report spam” button, they will be unsubscribed from the list. The survey also found that 43% of respondents do not use unsubscribe links in e-mail and simply use the ISP's "report spam" button to unsubscribe from an advertiser's list."
It goes on to say that Q Interactive (who co-branded the study) is calling on our industry to better educate people and for ISPs to better process the data. From our perspective, this is a daunting challenge. From our end, we bring on clients that are reputable marketers and build their lists the right way. If someone hits the spam button, it's not through our email but rather through an email provider like AOL, MSN or Yahoo. Perhaps they should be the ones giving a "Are you sure" prompt with the ramifications of what the consumer is about to do. If they're going to patrol the highway, they should at least put a few road signs up.
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