On very few occasions is any thought put into the unsubscribe message and mechanism. Here are some tips to think about with your unsubscribe messages.

1) Wording for spam filters

Getting an unsubscribe wording can be difficult in relation to Spam filters. Many will flag ‘unsubscribe’ as an indicator the email is spam. This is because traditionally spammers have used a false unsubscribe link to verify whether an email address is valid or not.

Other words and phrases that can be problematic include “Remove”, “Opt-out”, and “if you no longer”.

You might want to re-phrase these if your emails are going to the junk mail folder.

2) Use different unsubscribes

If you have different types of email campaigns or newsletters it is worth giving your recipients the option of unsubscribing from all emails or just the specific newsletter. You will see an example of this in the Maxenews newsletter.

3) Use a profile page

Profile pages can be used to give recipients the opportunity to choose their preferences including how often they want to receive emails. This approach will reduce the level of unsubscribes and enable you to learn valuable information about your list.

4) Keep a record of all unsubscribes

To make it easy to keep a record of people not to send to keep a list. This will come in handy when you extract new lists from your internal databases.

5) Action unsubscribes immediately

There is nothing more infuriating for a recipient to receive an email after they have unsubscribed. With the technology solutions available today there is no excuse for taking several days to process unsubscribes.

© 2005 Emailcenter UK Ltd.