Will Spam Complaints be Reduced?

The Call is coming from email marketers for changes to the major ISP email interfaces, especially Yahoo! and AOL. With the addition of the unsubscribe button to Microsoft’s Windows Live Email Interface, the new free e-mail service replacing Hotmail, marketers would like a level playing field with the other ISPs.

Microsoft is the first email box provider to answer email marketers' calls in the beginning of August 2006 by including an unsubscribe button in its interface so consumers will be less likely to mistakenly report permission-based commercial e-mail as spam. Microsoft's unsubscribe link started appearing two weeks ago, replacing the report-and-delete button on some e-mails in Windows Live.

Consumers frequently use the Spam reporting buttons rather than unsubscribe to prevent mailers' messages from arriving even though they agreed to receive the messaging. In a recent survey, nearly 79% of consumers admitted that they have hit the "spam" or "junk" e-mail button to get rid of e-mail they don't want. Nearly 37% do it as a way to unsubscribe from things they had asked to receive. Every complaint counts as a black mark against the sender. Numerous complaints can result in ISPs blocking email from a sender. The new Windows Live unsubscribe button will not register as a spam complaint, according to Microsoft.

As long as email arriving at Microsoft with a valid list-unsubscribe function - a line of code that allows ISPs to automatically forward unsubscribe requests back to the sender - and the sender passes Microsoft's internal "reputation" test determining the sender is not a spammer, the unsubscribe button will appear.

Without the valid list-unsubscribe information in the header, emails will receive the Spam complaint button.

The product is currently in beta and could change.