Introduction
Email opt-out refers to the option given to recipients to unsubscribe or decline further emails from a sender, typically in marketing or promotional emails. It allows individuals to stop receiving unwanted messages and is often required by law, such as under the CAN-SPAM Act. Not only is it in many places required by law but we want to protect user information as best we can. So providing users with and easy and fast option to stop receiving our emails. In this post we will talk about many of the benefits of having an easy and seamless opt out experience.
Risks of sharing information
People are far more cautious about sharing personal information today than they were a decade ago. Given the constant influx of emails we receive daily, it’s important to treat someone’s email address with the seriousness it deserves. When a person provides their email, they’re placing a level of trust in you or our company, fully aware of the potential risks. Because of this trust, it’s our responsibility not only to safeguard their data but also to respect their wishes and stop using it when they request.
Benefits of Implementing Email Opt-Out
Email opt out gives people control over their personal data and increases their trust with you. Most third party email providers like SendGrid already provide this functionality out of the box. But those solutions can be expensive so if you are sending emails on your own you will want to make sure you have a seamless OptOut process. One of the easiest and low tech ways to do this is to give users an “OptOut” email address where they can unsubscribe from your emails. The obvious downside to this is many people have become skeptical of these OptOut email addresses because many spammers have used them to determine if an email address is active or not. The better option is to create an OptOut form on your website. This is better in many ways, first being you can give the user and option to reduce the frequency of emails they receive from you. Offering this option may keep you from losing email addresses all together if they would prefer to not get an email once a day. Either of these solutions should be tied into either an automated work flow that will remove or change the frequency of emails to the user (best option). Or it should be tied into a process there the user is either removed or frequency changed within 24 hours of the request.
There are obvious benefits to having a seamless OptOut policy:
- Improves trust between the customer and the company
- Allowing user to reduce the frequency helps to retain email addresses
- Improves IP and Domain Reputation
- Reduces the number of customers who make mark your email as SPAM
Conclusion
A seamless email OptOut process is a must for any company that does email marketing to any number of users. Using a third party product like SendGrid helps to make this process easier, but it can certainly be done without a third party. Whatever you decide is best for you make sure you follow through with the requests in a timely manner and you should see you customer trust and reputation improve.