Relevancy and Education are Key

This morning ABC's Good Morning America ran a segment as a part of their "Take Control of Your Life" Series about going on an email diet. The idea is to have some face-to face or telephone contact.

The first tip to help take control of your life and your inbox is to cut the clutter before it starts. They suggest you remove yourself from every distribution and mailing list you don't need. And to click no on the "May we add you to our mailing list" box when registering on a website or shopping online.

If you are working towards uncluttering, that makes sense. If you're not opening messages, eventually you might get dumped. Save yourself from getting your feelings hurt and unsubscribe.

After the segment ran, Elizabeth Vargas interviewed Tory Johnson, the Workplace contributor for Good Morning America. A question was asked about blocking SPAM. While I can't quote the answer directly, because it sent me reeling, the general idea was again to unsubscribe from emails you no longer read.

Just because you are no longer interested in receiving an email campaign that you have opted-in to receive does not make it SPAM.

The average subscriber may never fully understand what is and what is not SPAM. It's probably not high on their priority list to learn. And that's okay.

If...

As email marketers, we do our best to remind and educate subscribers as to how they were added to our lists, make unsubscribing easy, just in case they want to, and most importantly, keep our content relevant, interesting and engaging.



By giving subscribers what they want, they'll continue to come back for more.