Comments on: Unsubscribing From Newsletters: Heroes and Villains

By: SJS

SJS — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 18:05:14 +0000

Not only am I not unsubscribed from Catalink, I never subscribed to them in the first place, and yet they have my date of birth and my postal address, neither of which are posted anywhere on the internet. I have asked them where they got this information from, but received no reply, other than to tell me that I am “unsubscribed.” Ten days later I am still receiving their spam.

By: Danny Staple

Danny Staple — Wed, 20 May 2009 13:48:39 +0000

Just to clarify – if I then look at the account details again – I am still subscribed to those things, after unticking them – so it is not unsubscribing.

By: Danny Staple

Danny Staple — Wed, 20 May 2009 13:47:40 +0000

I am finding I have a lot of difficulty removing myself from Catalink – when I untick the boxes, I see an “subscribe again” submit box, but no other submit box. These unticks are not submitted. Thus I cannot unsubscribe. I have sent an unsubscribe email and hope that will be honoured as I am really trying to get off this system.

By: corbyboy

corbyboy — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 13:08:28 +0000

Thanks for the feedback. It really is great that a company would take the time to send some feedback on my experiences.

I very much agree that an “unsubscribe from all” feature is essential. From a programming point of view it shouldn’t be too difficult and I am glad it is on top of your list.

As for the 30 day to unsubscribe statement, why not just say that it should take 7 rather than 30. Underneath the unsubscribe area why not get rid of “Please note it can take up to 1 month to be fully unsubscribed from our system.” Replace that with “We may already have messages queued to be sent so you may receive 1 or 2 emails in the next week.”
It is much more user friendly and at least you are giving people an explanation. It’s like when you are waiting for a train that is delayed. If somebody takes the time to explain to you why the train is delayed then the wait doesn’t seem so bad.

The unsubscribe loop and automatically unsubscribing anybody who replies with “unsubscribe” are great features, so why don’t you mention them? At the bottom of each email why not simply say “Visit your account to unsubscribe from individual newsletters. Reply to this message with the subject ‘unsubscribe’ and you will be removed from all active newsletters.”

I appreciate you are disappointed that I only rated your system 1 out of 10, but if you make the improvements I mentioned, there is no reason why the rating cannot become a 10.

Again, thanks for taking the time to respond. It shows great customer service. If you have any feedback on these comments, please feel free to reply.

By: Catalink

Catalink — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 15:03:45 +0000

This is a good blog post and contains fair comments. I thought i would take a moment and express a view from the perspective of one of the reviewed sites: Catalink.com. Unlike most sites Catalink.com covers various specific niche areas including Catalogues, Holiday Brochures, eNewsletters and Cashback. Also unlike most sites Catalink is on online source providing in part “offline material”. This means there are quite a number of permutations and combinations of options, hence the lengthy list of things to unsubscribe from.

We hadn’t considered an unsubscribe from all option as most members tend to be specific. But it is also possible as you say that people get bored having to click each one and so give up. Apro pro of this we have added this “unsubscribe from all feature” to the top of our development list and should have it in place very soon.

With regard to the 30 day period to be fully unsubscribed, Catalink quotes 30 days, but in reality it is less than 7 days. Because we have over a million members we need to setup mailings in advance, each person receives a fully personalized email with a selection of Catalogues or Holiday brochures tailored specifically to them. The processing time on this alone is 2-3 days, then the emailing itself another 3-4 days, so the sheer volume of members causes the delay.

As an aside, something which you cant really test, but when someone clicks the “mark this as spam” in their Hotmail/Live or AOL account we are sent a “feedback loop” email which is automatically processed by our system in real time to unsubscribe that person from all of our newsletters. We also manually unsubscribe anyone replying to the newsletters with “unsubscribe” in it anywhere, subject or body text. Both of these are well beyond any CAN-SPAM directives. We place a huge importance on our opt out procedure and our members privacy, and so it is disappointing to see feedback like this, but we are proactive and welcome feedback, good or bad so that we can enhance our service.

Thanks for taking the time to review us and give feedback, keep up the good work.