Every Thursday at our weekly meeting, our sales team discusses a topic relevant to the industry.  Today, we talked about opt-out practices, and we reviewed Phase Three of SilverPOP's Retail Email study.  If you have not read it, it's basically a survey of 175 ecommerce leaders who use various email solutions (including ours).  It's a great cross-section of companies, practices, and perspectives.

The opt-out study essentially highlights the fact that most etailers (73%) allow subscribers to simply terminate their subscription without any type of discussion.  Only 7% allow the person to rethink their decision, and only 3% ask why the former subscriber would like to opt out.  2% of the companies require the person to enter their password in order to opt out.  I am glad to see this number is so low...I have been wanting to opt out of my incessantly irrelevant deal alerts from Southwest Airlines and United Airlines for months, but I can't remember the passwords I set up many moons ago.

The study goes on to suggest various engagement methods such as allowing the subscriber to alter a subscription preference or their messaging frequency.  I really like both strategies.  Sometimes a person doesn't realize that various mailings are offered by a particular marketer...why not verify whether they would like to opt out of just one of them or all of them?  Along the same lines, I might have a little more patience for marketing promotions in my inbox if they would simply arrive less often.  If I had the option of turning that daily annoyance into a weekly update, I would probably do it.  Wouldn't you rather talk to a lot of subscribers a few times a month than half the subscribers every other day?

Most of the time, we have no idea what we are getting into when we subscribe to something.  Unless the marketer provides us with an example, some frequency expectations, and a couple of reasons why we should participate, we are generally being lead down a blind path.  Giving us the option of specifying our preferences or providing a link to an exit survey might be the only way you get to find out how to improve your program.