Email Marketing Usability

Freshness Warning
This article is over 16 years old. It's possible that the information you read below isn't current.

30 Sep 2002

Jakob Nielsen’s latest Alertbox describes the process of subscribing and unsubscribing to email lists. I’ve written about this subject recently so I though it was worth a mention.

Savvy email marketers have known for some time that not only it is important to make it easy for your users to get on your mailing list, but it even more important to make it easy for readers to get off your list. Sending mail to people who don’t want it reduces the success rate for your marketing campaigns and the cick rate for your advertisers.

It’s also a good idea to test your messages, espiecially subscription list removal emails, in popular email clients. You wouldn’t build a Web site without testing in multiple browsers, so don’t build an email campaign without testing it in different email clients. Whether plain text or HTML, your message is going to look different to different mail readers.

It’s also important to test your email by running it through a variety of common spam filters. Create test email acounts with ISPs that use Brightmail and SpamAssassin and make sure your messages get through. Turn on all the spam filtering options in your test email clients and make sure that your message isn’t blocked. Send tests to Hotmail and Yahoo Mail accounts to see if the message is trapped by their spam filters. Run the message past client side filters like SpamFire and Spam Killer. If a customer tries to subscribe or unsubscribe and the confirmation is trapped by a spam filter, they’ll be left wondering if their action took hold.

The Alertbox also offers tips for imroving your newsletters, but experienced email marketers are not going to find any groundbreaking ideas here.

Read Email Newsletter Usability


Your comments:

Text only, no HTML. URLs will automatically be converted to links. Your email address is required, but it will not be displayed on the site.

Name:

Not your company or your SEO link. Comments without a real name will be deleted as spam.

Email: (not displayed)

If you don't feel comfortable giving me your real email address, don't expect me to feel comfortable publishing your comment.

Website (optional):

Follow me on Twitter

Best Of

  • How not to apply for a job Applying for a job isn't that hard, but it does take some minimal effort and common sense.
  • Movie marketing on a budget Mark Cuban's looking for more cost effective ways to market movies.
  • California State Fair The California State Fair lets you buy tickets in advance from their Web site. That's good. But the site is a horror house of usability problems.
  • Customer reference questions. Sample questions to ask customer references when choosing a software vendor.
  • Comment Spam Manifesto Spammers are hereby put on notice. Your comments are not welcome. If the purpose behind your comment is to advertise yourself, your Web site, or a product that you are affiliated with, that comment is spam and will not be tolerated. We will hit you where it hurts by attacking your source of income.
  • More of the best »

Recently Read

Get More

Subscribe | Archives

Recently

Assumptions and project planning (Feb 18)
When your assumptions change, it's reasonable that your project plans and needs change as well. But too many managers are afraid to go back and re-work a plan that they've already agreed to.
Feature voting is harmful to your product (Feb 7)
There's a lot of problems with using feature voting to drive your product.
Encouraging 1:1s from other managers in your organization (Jan 4)
If you’re managing other managers, encourage them to hold their own 1:1s. It’s such an important tool for managing and leading that everyone needs to be holding them.
One on One Meetings - a collection of posts about 1:1s (Jan 2)
A collection of all my writing on 1:1s
Are 1:1s confidential? (Jan 2)
Is the discussion that occurs in a 1:1 confidential, even if no agreed in the meeting to keep it so?
Skip-level 1:1s are your hidden superpower (Jan 1)
Holding 1:1s with peers and with people far below you on the reporting chain will open your eyes up to what’s really going on in your business.
Do you need a 1:1 if you’re regularly communicating with your team? (Dec 28)
You’re simply not having deep meaningful conversation about the process of work in hallway conversations or in your chat apps.
What agenda items should a manager bring to a 1:1? (Dec 23)
At least 80% of a 1:1 agenda should be driven by your report, but if you also to use this time to work on things with them, then you’ll have better meetings.

Subscribe to this site's feed.

Contact

Adam Kalsey

Mobile: 916.600.2497

Email: adam AT kalsey.com

Twitter, etc: akalsey

Resume

PGP Key

©1999-2019 Adam Kalsey.