How To Lose Subscribers

I recently signed up for a subscription to a newsletter, produced by ientry.com. It was a very big mistake.

While the content of the newsletter is pretty good, only about 1/3 of the e-mails they send are the newsletter. The other 2/3 are third party ads with subject lines indistinguishable from their newsletter mailings. Since there are plenty of ads in the newsletter itself, you think they'd let you opt-out from the separate third party ad mailings with one request.

Nope. Their practice is to create a separate mailing list for each advertiser's third party ads and then make you opt out from each list... after you've received at least one ad from that advertiser. Sound like spam? Sounds like it to me.

I liked the content of the newsletter and sent a note to their support address, asking if it was possible to receive just the newsletter and opt out of third party advertiser mailings in advance.

No reply. Then they sent me an ad under the cover of a newsletter of theirs I never subscribed to. It seems the longer I remain subscribed to anything there, the more mailing lists of theirs they place me on without my approval, and require me to opt out of each one individually.

So, despite the fact that I liked their newsletter, I have sent them an e-mail asking to be removed from all their mailing lists in perpetuity.

When someone is good enough to sign up for your mailing list, they're an asset to be valued, not a commodity to be exploited, because as quickly as they decided to sign up, they can decide to unsubscribe. Even worse, they might start clicking the "this is spam" button at mail services like Yahoo and Hotmail, which can affect your deliverability to other users of those services if your e-mails get reported as spam often enough. If you treat them in a manner that shows them no respect and makes them feel used and abused, they can not only unsubscribe, but can start negatively impacting your business.

Too many companies seem to operate on the philosophy of "do unto others whatever the contract allows" instead of "do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Being able to cite subparagraph D of subsection 4 when a customer complains is no substitute for not having the customer complain at all.

In my opinion, iEntry.com treated me as an asset to be exploited instead of a customer to be valued, and so they lost my business. Whether you're running a web site, e-mail newsletter, or a retail operation, be there to serve your customers. Don't treat them as if they're there to serve you... or they won't be there for long.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 16th, 2007 at 9:37 pm and is filed under Online Marketing And SEO, Techno Thoughts.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.