How To Break Up With Your Email

I’ve been attacking my inbox lately after reading this excellent article here on Medium, so I’ve been unsubscribing from emails and newsletters – I’d say about 40 to 50 of them so far. What an eye opener that has been.

It seems that email services fall into one of four categories when it comes to breaking up:

1. One Night Stands. One click and they are gone. You never hear from them again – it’s like they were never there. I’ll probably subscribe to these again one day, knowing it’s so easy to turn them off if I want to.
2. Can We Still Be Friends. These ask several questions, such as ‘Are you sure?’ and ‘You mean just this email?’ and ‘Do you mean unsubscribe from every email from this address. Ever? Really?’ and ‘If you clicked on this by mistake, then that’s OK. Let’s just forget this whole conversation.’ These are mildy irritating, but they mean well (I think). Might subscribe again.
3. I Haz A Divorce Lawyer. These services will send you one last email – arrrgghhh but I don’t want any more emails!! – saying something along the lines of ‘Fine. But it will take 1,000 weeks for us to process your request.’ Then they continue sending you emails every day, just because they know you hate it. These are very annoying, would not subscribe again and would not recommend to a friend.
4. Bunny Boiler. These services are steadfastly in denial and just wont let go. First they reluctantly agree to a split, then they demand you supply a mythical login and password which you have no recollection of in order to unsubscribe, and finally they refuse to let you reset the password when you say you can’t remember. And they continue sending you emails every day. These emails are the worst kind to receive and will stalk you to your grave. Marking them as spam is the only option. I almost feel sorry for the emails that I’ve finally had to mark as spam. If they get too many reports of spam they risk being blacklisted by ISPs, and ‘poof’ there goes their business. But hey, they shouldn’t try to force themselves onto people (No means NO!).

The moral of this story? When someone says ‘I want a break’ then just let them unsubscribe. Pestering them forever or pouring concrete over their inbox so they can’t leave you won’t make them buy more from you.

In fact it has the complete opposite effect.

This post also appeared on my blog.