Preexisiting Business Relationship be Damned!

The legislation around marketing these days makes most of us marketers cringe, but being in the email industry you need to keep yourself current on the laws being proposed and passed in states you send mail in to and maintaining CAN-SPAM compliance. I am a true believer that we, as civic minded, responsible adults should be able to clearly see the right from the wrong - but if I hear one more marketer fall back on the crutch of a preexisting business relationship I may just throw something (or someone) across the room!

I am not going to go down the path of rolling a select few under the proverbial bus today (as I am feeling a little sympathetic to the plight) but today was the day that the preexisting business relationship was apparent in my inbox. I talk to a lot of people on behalf of my clients - and in two such instances I was working with publishers to secure dedicated email sends for the purposes of lead generation (which I am not a big proponent of...but that is another rant for another day). Now I have not signed a contract or an insertion order with either organization, but somehow, I have miraculously found myself on their subscriber list and have begun receiving email from their various partners.....so to you, I say, Preexisting Business Relationship be Damned! What ever happened to best practice? Express permission? Even feigned interest?

The hunt found me again! The skunk? All you list owners out there that think this is an OK practice. And the resolution? STOP IT!

Don't Forget the Unsubscribe Laws Have Changed!

The Hunt

I was on a purging mission recently, unsubscribing from communications that I receive at multiple email addresses to reduce my receipt to only one - go figure! But as I was working through this process, I found a disturbing fact - many email marketers have not yet revised their unsubscribe practices to require nothing more than email address to convert the request. This was a clarification to the CAN-SPAM law and went in to effect on July 7, 2008.

The Skunk

Most noteworthy of offenders was American Airlines. A message I received on August 14, 2008 included a link in the message footer that simply said unsubscribe. When clicked, it takes you to a page that requires you to enter your AAdvantage Number and a Password before you can proceed to the unsubscribe function. Here is the screen capture current as of August 19, 2008:

The Resolution
Fix your unsubscribe process American Airlines! Not only is it annoying that I need to dig up my AAdvantage number to actually get off your mailing list, but your process isn't even legal any more! Keeping your unsubscribe process simplistic, easy to find and easy to convert make for much happier customers. Just because someone no longer wants to receive your email, doesn't mean you are losing them as a customer. You need to keep the experience pleasant at every touch-point. A bad experience with your email program today can result in negative brand perception tomorrow. And let's face it, no one can afford that. No matter what the price of oil is!