Professional email marketing involves two basic functions – opt-in and opt-out. While most marketers see the logic in getting a customer to opt-in, some marketers fail to see the equal benefits of the opt-out.

Some tribes in Internet marketing seem to think that the bigger their list, the more successful they are. As a result, they use all types of tactics to prevent you from unsubscribing to their emails. One such example I came across recently is by Keith Wellman, a “my-way-or-the-highway” type of business person.

For some reason, Keith Wellman decides to pressure you from opting out by masking his opt-out link with a warning message:

“Do not use this link unless you do NOT want product updates and upgrades”.

Yet, Keith has never emailed me about any update or upgrade, just more nonsense offers from his buddies. Putting obstacles in your subscriber’s path to opt-out paints a rather negative picture. Does it mean if I choose not to get Keith’s emails that I will not qualify for updates of a product that I have paid for?

That’s what the message seems to imply!

If you do not make it clear and easy for subscribers to opt-out, they can just click the “Spam” button on their Gmail account and they will never hear from you again anyway.

Email marketing is about building a list of relevant subscribers who still want to hear from you. It’s not about the size. 100 happy subscribers is always better than 10,000 pissed-off ones.

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