Good luck unsubscribing from email newsletters sent by Best Buy and Hertz. As the below video elaborates, when your email address (that receives the newsletters) is not recognized as a valid address, a failure occurs.
Let this be a lesson to email marketing companies. If you provide a means for a recipient to unsubscribe, don’t make the process difficult and ensure the address is in your database for prompt removal.
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{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
July 6, 2011 at 1:57 PM
Assuming the boss cares, then I think this comes down to a failure to do just one thing.
That one thing is to use the system yourself. Behave like a customer and test like a customer. And do it regularly.
Having said that, I have some sympathy for an online business though because it is not always so easy to test everything to make sure it is working.
With a physical store it is easy to test whether for example, those signs are visible or those doors open as they should. With an online business, some problems are only triggered when certain other things happen in a specific order.
That’s where an error reporting system can help. We use Hoptoad, which collects errors generated by other applications, and aggregates the results and sends them to us to review.
July 6, 2011 at 2:33 PM
I think it’s way funny when businesses make it really hard to unsubscribe.
July 6, 2011 at 2:50 PM
Don’t they realize this gets them marked as spam and reduces the likelihood that their marketing messages will make it to the inboxes of those who wish to read them?
July 6, 2011 at 4:34 PM
I had the same exact horrible experience trying to unsubscribe from Best Buy. I finally set up a rule in Outlook to automatically delete those messages. Very frustrating–and I definitely won’t be shopping at Best Buy again.
Things like that really annoy me Ari, after watching the video, I share your frustration :-/
Its just a showcase of how things can go bad if you just keep your customers entangled with you-they are gonna hate you! I duly support the fact that the process of unsubscription should be easy and understandable to all.
Best Buy & Hertz really disappointed me with this one, I thought they were pros. It seems not. Thanks for sharing…
George Wiliams
A few years ago I would have said “outing” someone like this was a bit harsh but I am really getting sick of bad service, bad companies, companies taking advantage and all the rest of it. I think this is a good move.
I am working on an “outing” post for my own blog right now and I think after reading yours above I will include a similar video.
Regarding this fail, they need to get it sorted as they are actually breaking the law, lets hope it was just your email address and its not failed for everyone.
Another bad habit for branding I suppose, as it will always turn out as spammy for newly subscribed users. Though, for brands that are really known for the quality of their service/product/content, I think this wouldn’t be a big issue, perhaps SEOmoz’s or Mashable type of site monthly newsletter.
Ugh this happens to me all the time, I get so sick of it.
The other thing that gets on my nerve is that I unsubscribe from something yet emails from the sender just keep on coming, frustrates me so much.
July 11, 2011 at 5:22 PM
There aren’t too many newsletters that I actually read, and I find myself unsubscribing from most. It really annoys me when my inbox is jam packed with Newsletters from websites that I am not interested in. What irks me even more is when I can’t unsubscribe. Those usually just get automatically added to the Junk folder.
Sounds ridiculous decent companies facilitate the user to unsubscribe by just clicking on one link which can be found in their every newsletter.