Perfect Newsletter
My conclusions on organizing 2500 messages in Inbox.
Lack of newsletter is perfect. Totally! You don’t need it. I don’t read newsletters, notifications, offers. Anyone does? Maybe someone finds them valuable, but not me. The key feature of your newsletter is unsubscribe link. If you make it simple you saved your honor, that you had lost when you spammed me.
Things you should remember if you really have to create newsletter about your service:
Add an unsubscribe link
This is the most important thing in your e-mail.
Make the unsubscribe link inconceivably small in the footer of the message
I am not expecting anything good from people who send newsletters. I am really searching for this freaking small unsubscribe link. That is so small just to make it harder for me to opt-out from newsletter. Occasionally, there is a big button for that. However, I find the small link much faster, because this is what I am looking for. Or maybe you do it on purpose? Than you are evil guy who knows that best way to hide things is to make them obviously visible. Point for you! Congratulations pumping up newsletter stats. Go to your boss for a bonus.
Send newsletter from one distinct e-mail address
If you keep changing sender address I cannot create message filters that work. Maybe you are changing them because you are clever and you may think: He has filters for news@foo.com so I will change it to supernews@foo.com and I will place my super duper important marketing message in his Inbox. Stop being asshole. I got this filter not to bother with your messages. I probably couldn’t unsubscribe easily form your newsletter, so I created the filter to remove it.
If you make different kinds of notifications make an option to unsubscribe from all of them
Ok, you are sending groups notifications from groups@foo.com and invitations form inviation@foo.com just for my convenience. But I don’t want them, so for my convenience make single unsubscribe all button on your page. Make this option available without logging to my account and searching for the settings. Make it in the unsubscribe link target page.
Send important administration from distinct e-mail address other than newsletter
I don’t want to accidentally jump over your „We suspect that someone hacked your account” message because I automatically archive all e-mails from your domain. If I need to do this, you probably failed at point 1, 3 and 4. But anyway I want to read important information from you. If I didn’t, I would remove my account.
Use the same e-mail you were welcoming me in the service. Use it only for important things like password changes, security breach warnings. Make it sound serious: important@myservice.com. When I will prepare the query to remove the newsletters and other crap I will exclude just this e-mail.
Just unsubscribe
Don’t ask for a login or password to my account. The most annoying part of unsubscribing is when someone ask you to login to the account and change the settings. Sure it’s convenient for you, but in 90% of cases I don’t remember my password to the account. Sure, you can send me e-mail the link to change password. But I didn’t want your damn e-mails in the first place!
To sum up.
Don’t do newsletters. It should be an option not the default. Don’t distract me.
Disclaimer:
I had heard about unroll.me. I tried it. I didn’t like it.
It is not frustration. It is humor.
