Carly Buxton, PhD

A friend of mine (and fellow founder) has a filter on his email that sends any email containing the word “unsubscribe” into his trash. He misses out on things from time to time, but I think he’d still recommend this practice as a way to save time and salvage some inbox sanity.

I have a few thoughts about this:

1. Some outfits are learning to beat this game. Companies are legally required to make it easy to “unsubscribe” from newsletters, but they’re starting to skirt these hacky filters by rephrasing things. For example: Hearing from us too frequently? Change your notification settings here. That email would make it past my friend’s filter. But it doesn’t mean he wants it. 
2. I have no such filter, but I unsubscribe to things all the time. I dislike all newsletters and find them to be just noise. I resent that most companies these days devote time and resources to cluttering would-be customers’ inboxes as a way to stay top of mind. Even if your newsletter is great, I don’t want to be sidetracked daily by your agenda. Newsletters are out of control. We don’t deploy a newsletter at my own company because I’m so viscerally against it. I bet your company deploys one, though. Now it’s time to ask yourself: is this of any value? What are your open rates? How much time would you reclaim (and revenue would you sacrifice) if you just stopped putting this out altogether? Maybe yours is one of those rare newsletters that people genuinely look forward to (like Lenny’s perhaps). But I’m guessing it’s not. If you truly feel like it’s a valuable resource for your customers, could you make it monthly instead of weekly or–cringe–daily? 
3. When people unsubscribe from your newsletter, do you serve them with this useless survey?

What is the source of this terrible attempt at “data collection,” and why does nearly every unsubscribe action prompt me with it? OBVIOUSLY people almost always answer #1 (if they answer at all), or occasionally #2 if they’re pissed about being added to a list without permission, but how is any of this information valuable? Remember that very important litmus test: can you use the information you’re asking for? If not, rephrase the question or don’t ask it at all. I want this question to be rewritten. Here are the options I’d posit: Unsubscribe successful. If you have a moment, please let us know why you unsubscribed:

• I’m no longer as into your company as I used to be
• I am trying to save my inbox and don’t see enough value from your newsletter
• Other (with free text box)

Or better yet: which of the following could have kept you as a subscriber?

• More useful / valuable information
• A “less frequent” sending cadence 
• More insider deals / coupons 
• None of these / I’m just not an email newsletter person
• Something else (with free text box)

Action item: if you’re the person in charge of email newsletters at your company, it’s time to look yourself in the mirror and have a little existential crisis. AI will make personalized content even more ubiquitous, and on the surface, it will encourage every company to generate noise and plop it into their [target] customers’ inboxes. But this also means that your content will need to be much more valuable to rise above the noise. I predict more unsubscribes in the future, and if you are among them, you’ll want reformat your survey to find out how to make your noise more valuable.