Wow, two hyphens in a title. What was I thinking?
I’ve been spending a bit of time over the past few days cleaning out my email boxes and getting rid of a lot of my Bacn. The opt out process is often a torturous ordeal that you go through to attempt to remove yourself from the clutches of some current or potential product or service provider. Everyone wants you to subscribe to their newsletter. One company I signed up with when I opted into what I thought was 1 email, started sending me several every day. Sorry (name redacted), I’m just not that into you. When you send me more email than my wife, we may have a problem.
So, there’s been a lot of dragging the scrollbar to the bottom of email messages in order to hunt for the opt-out link. I think I can safely classify any email company into one of three camps.
- The sketchy – You’re not sure you’re never going to hear from them, they don’t explain the process, and you leave not 100% sure that you won’t receive another email from them.
- The normal - You’re reasonably sure that, barring some technical glitch, your inbox door will no longer be darkened by their messages.
- The classy – They make it fun. They make you laugh a bit. They fill you in on what’s going to happen, they explain that it may take a few days to remove you and you go away feeling almost bad for unsubscribing from their newsletters (I’ve even changed my mind on one of these).
Which camp is your organization in? I’m not going to point out the bad examples, but I will throw a bone to one of the better ones I’ve run across recently. Skype. Thanks, Skype, for making our relationship more than just a simple transaction.
