How often do you receive an email newsletter (or any type of inbound marketing, whether online or print) and realize you never read it and want to unsubscribe?
My Visa credit card is provided through a membership in the Massachusetts State Employees Credit Union. Because I used to work in state government, I was able to apply for a union share.
The credit union produces quarterly email newsletters. Or are they monthly? I rarely read them. They typically go straight to my trash.
After receiving the latest issue, I opted to unsubscribe. If I can't save them paper, I might as well save them another email address to spam when I don't care for the content of an upgraded data processing system, banking hours, coupons, etc. I only use the credit union for the credit card.
At the bottom of the email, I spied the following text:
You are receiving this email because you have registered yourself for Massachusetts State Employee Credit Union mailing lists. To MODIFY your permission settings, or to UNSUBSCRIBE, please click here.
I clicked there.
For most mailing lists, the link is coded to my account, a new window opens, and a message appears I am unsubscribed and will take effect in the next 7 to 30 days.
Other lists might ask me to input my email address and/or check a box to confirm I want to leave the list.
The credit union's email link brought me here:
I typed in my email address, clicked the button â€" and voila:
No thanks.
I don't remember my password, and it's not worth my energy to go through a multi-step process to get a temporary password, log in, then unsubscribe.
Instead, I'll continue receiving the newsletters but will train my GMail account to automatically send them to my spam folder.
There's a lesson here: Please make it easy for your customers to commit an action. The more hoops they have to hurdle, the less likely they will follow through.
I plan to call the credit union next week and explain why I don't like the newsletter and why they make it too hard for me to unsubscribe. Though... maybe that's their point.
Got any similar stories you care to share?
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