(note: I'd originally made this example anonymous, but changed it to make it clear I was talking about chef's.)
We all get a lot of email. A lot of
spam, a lot of offers from retailers we’ve done business with before, a lot of
coupons, sale reminders, and new product offerings. A member of my staff, Sarah,
was telling me this morning that she just started to go a little crazy with the
volume of promotional emails she was getting in her personal account. It had
gotten to the point that of 100+ daily emails to her personal account, less than
a dozen were from friend and family and the rest were spam or promotional
emails. Usually, she just deletes all the unwanted mail in one shot without
reading it, but last week she hit a breaking point and decided she would try to
unsubscribe from every email newsletter as in came in, in an effort to reduce
the amount of email she was getting. What can I say, she’s a little high strung,
and I mean that fondly.
One of the emails she was getting
was from Chef’s Catalog. She shops from Chef’s pretty regularly and almost
decided to stay on the email list, but resolved to eliminate ALL promotional
emails. So she clicked “unsubscribe.” First, she was taken to this
screen:
|
Because she works for ForeSee
Results and our whole business is online customer satisfaction, Sarah was
curious to see what would happen next. If she clicked the button saying she
wanted fewer emails, she just got a “thank you” screen. If she clicked that she
wanted to be totally unsubscribed, she got a very short survey asking for
feedback on why she was unsubscribing:
|
Not being someone who goes on
“unsubscription” tears, I wouldn’t know, but Sarah said this was the only time
(of maybe 50-75 unsubscriptions over the last week?) she was asked WHY she was
unsubscribing. And she was unsubscribing from email newsletters from dozens of
top retailers and news sites who should have pretty sophisticated approaches to
retention, loyalty, and email marketing programs. Again, what a great idea to
try and get some sense of why people don’t want to get the emails any more. This
gives Chef’s actionable insight: if a significant number of people are hitting
any of the first for radio buttons, Chef’s can make changes that might prevent
further opt-outs. Why isn’t everyone doing this?
We actually did some work with
Border’s (you can read the case
study in STORES Magazine) to assess how useful their email newsletters were
and whether coupons or content were better at driving store traffic and building
long-term loyalty. So assessing email newsletters is not unprecedented, but I
like the idea of assessing defectors to try and make
improvements.
I guess the point is, for such a
mature and developed industry, there are still clearly so many cutting edge
practices when it comes to assessing online marketing initiatives. And they are
easy to do and give you so much valuable info! Sarah also mentioned that
probably less than 1/5 of unsubscribe screens take you back to the company’s
home page, which seems like a very obvious best practice. The vast majority just
take you to a screen that says you have successfully unsubscribed. Whereas, if
they took you immediately back to the home page, there is at least a small chance that you would say to
yourself, “Now that’s taken care of and I won’t be getting any more pesky emails
. . . and oh, wow, that suede jacket sure looks nice…and it’s on
sale!”
Some of our recent research shows
that promotional emails are one of the most valuable sources of high-quality
traffic for e-retailers. 26% of site browsers report that they came because of
an email (compared to 10% from a search engine and 10% from a recommendation),
and those that do come because of a promotional email are much more likely to be
satisfied, likely to buy, likely to be loyal, etc. So this is a huge area of
opportunity for these companies. Even small innovations, like those of Chefs,
above, could translate to big numbers in sales. In fact, Sarah said she had a
great experience with Chef’s website and customer service last Christmas, and
the fact that they handled something so simple (opting out of email newsletters)
with some regard to her satisfaction made her more likely to shop from them in
the future. And this from someone who was unsubscribing from their emails! A
great example of turning a potentially negative interaction into a positive
one.
Great idea, but how are you getting around U.S. CAN-SPAM laws? Once someone requests to be unsubscribed, it's like a 'cease and desist" (at least that's the safest way to interpret the law) all contact.
Seems like you'd be pushing it with the follow up email of the survey type question, especially if it's delivered via email post completing the unsub.
Are you seeing the email as trasactional and not promotional/marketing oriented, consequently okay to send post the unsub request?
Wondering if you've had any backlash on this, and what your attorneys say about this practice. And not being rhetorical...I'd really like to know!
Posted by: Jolie | July 31, 2008 at 04:52 PM
Heather, je pouvais vraiment besoin de votre aide. J'ai demandé de l'aide typepad à plusieurs reprises. Ils m'envoient le même écrit tutoriel et je ne peux pas semblé pour l'obtenir. S'il vous plaît envoyez-moi votre email et je serai ravi de vous engager pour une aide supplémentaire avec mon blog au travers de Typepad.
Posted by: Air Jordan Shoes | December 24, 2010 at 04:03 AM
*Good health, like air, is essential to human beings!*
Posted by: taobao | December 31, 2010 at 03:13 AM
He is a good friend that speaks well of us behind our backs.
*_*
Posted by: Taobao English | January 10, 2011 at 04:57 AM
Um...like the style of your writing.*_*
Posted by: Shop taobao | January 14, 2011 at 01:09 AM