Always Test Your Unsubscribe Link
Rule of thumb: before you send any email, make sure your unsubscribe link works. It’s that simple. It may be a fairly obvious statement in regards to email marketing, yet something many overlook.
See this example below:
I received this email from Full Sail this morning and after realizing that information on their “entertainment business” degrees is irrelevant to me, I finally decided to put our relationship to rest… or so I thought. Once the very visible “unsubscribe” link was clicked, I was lead to this page:
Unsubscribe FAIL.
But this may not be Full Sail’s fault entirely. From clicking on the other links within the email, their Google URL builder states that the source is from “PasteMagazineContest”. This tells me the email was likely developed and managed by Paste Magazine as a partner / promotion deal. Shame on them both, though. For Paste not testing their email and for FullSail not providing a working unsubscribe link.
If I were FullSail, I’d get this link working ASAP as to avoid any potential SPAM complaints or even lawsuits.
Posted by Bryan Quilty on Feb. 25, 2010
Comments
I just checked the link again and it seems to be working. Do you plan on sending a follow up to those who received the 404 error or do you think that would just be overkill?
Posted by Bryan Quilty on 03/03/2010 09:41 AM
Maybe regular email list testing plans need to include an “irate subscriber” task?
Have several people sim the online reader from h#ll and track how their systems handle them. No, I’m not volunteering 
@Bryan. A followup to the 404’ed ex-subscribers might be overkill… it only takes 1% of that sublist to get all snarky online about being contacted from a list they were trying to leave to outweigh the good karma points.
Of course, I’d manually unsub them but I might also tweet that the prob had been fixed. That way, there is a public record that the issue was recognized and taken care of.
Posted by Mark McClure on 03/11/2010 04:18 AM
Hi,
I am the Internet Public Relations Specialist for Full Sail University. Full Sail deeply apologizes for your recent inconvenience with our email unsubscribe link, as we have never had any problems with our links in the past. Our Web Producer had the following comments to explain the issue:
“In launching our new website Monday, we missed formatting the unsubscribe page. We discovered this immediately after launching and have already fixed the issue.
However, the email unsubscribe process itself is entirely independent of the website, and anyone who unsubscribed during that three day period (Monday to Wednesday) did so successfully – they just didn’t see the right page telling them it had happened.
A mistake and oversight on our part, with our apologies.“
We would like to thank you for bringing this issue to our attention and once again apologize for the inconvenience.
Full Sail University
Posted by Internet PR Specialist on 02/25/2010 06:53 PM