This is a great discussion everyone, and very timely for me. I run
broadcast e-mail newsletters, sending out over 3 million e-mails per
month -- so it's a bit different than discussion lists, but the uns*b
problems remain.
I am now convinced that the most intuitive method for uns*bscribing is
to reply to the last newsletter received. Although I like the idea of
having a special address, as below, people will inevitably reply, so
that's the way I want to go.
Given that I want to do it this way, I need your help in deciding the
best syntax to use. I am leaning toward something like this:
"To be removed from our mailing list, put an x between these
brackets [] and reply. Do not make any other alterations to the
message."
My problem with this is that when AOL users, and users of other e-mail
clients, hit reply, the text is not automatically included. Some may
have trouble with this. (Would adding extra instructions help here? I'm
thinking no, but feel free to express your thoughts on that too.)
My other thought would be to have them put either "uns*bscribe" or
"remove" in the subject line. But the main reason I don't want to do
this is because some users will continue to put these commands in the
body, and simply not realize that they are doing something wrong. (So I
could add a line in our script to look for this, but this is difficult
to do without getting a high false positive rate, it seems. But do tell
if I'm missing something.)
I could go on with my other thoughts on this vexing issue, but I'm
looking for brilliant, free advice -- fast! :) I understand that no
method will be perfect, but the customer service aspects of what I do
are a bit overwhelming these days, so I want to implement the best
method.
Thanks for your time.
David Lundell
Producer, E-mail Products
CMPnet | http://www.cmpnet.com
>
> Point taken :) But I don't think you're right, prob cos I didn't
> explain myself very well:
>
> 1/ the listname-off idea is not a new invention -- there's software
> that does it already. I reckon its the best of the existing crop,
> and I'm just hacking our setup to support it.
>
> 2/ All it needs by way of instructions is "To leave the list, send any
> mail to listname-off@server". The minimal accurate instruction for
> the conventioonal command sybtax takes a paragraph to explain, and
> generally an example too.
>
> 3/ The listname-off@server address can be implemented as a URL in a
> webpage -- one click and you're done -- or in the modern MUAs that
> allow clickable URLs -- and in mailers such as Pegasus it can even
> be incoporated into the headers.
> Pegasus recognises List-Subscribe: and List-Unsubscribe headers, and
> offers a clickable, menu-driven, easily understood way of leaving
> the list. It's very neat, and it's not only Pegasus that
> supports it. I don't generally like non-standards, but because
> this one is buried in the headers, it's invisible to anyone whose
> mailer MUA doesn't support it, so it seems reasonably harmless.
>
> Best wishes,
> Claire
>
> --
> Claire McNab -- Claire@siberia.demon.co.uk
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