Hey team ActiveCampaign,
I totally understand the need to let unsubscribers report why they are unsubscribing.
But the option labeled, “This is Spam” is super unclear and gets many unwarranted reports.
(For our list with a high ratio of elderly subscribers, it’s about 20% of ubsubs!)
Think about it…
- SPAM is “Unsolicited email sent in bulk.”
- SPAM is not
- email you don’t remember signing up for, but did sign up for
- email you signed up for but feel the frequency is too high
- email you signed up for when there was a deal (which you got) but didn’t like being sent email marketing afterwards
Yet the ActiveCampaign form for “Why are you unsubscribing” has the meaning of “SPAM” left to the kneejerk reaction of unsubscribers who really don’t know better.
3. Punishing customers
Given that a user who clicks “This is Spam” will be punished (blacklisted from the sender forever), doesn’t it make sense to forewarn them how this option will impact them?
-
“This is Spam (Note: selecting this will prevent you from ever receiving emails from this sender again unless you personally call them).”
-
Or, “This is Spam (Note: this option is for unsolicited emails such as from scammers. If you signed up for this email but felt the frequency of email was too high, please select another option.”
4. Treating “SPAM” as a customer feedback poll
Lastly, by not explaining what “This is SPAM” means or does, some users probably think that this is a good way to send negative feedback to the sender about their email content/frequency.
Yet this is not a poll. This is a sensitive blacklisting, customer relationship killer!
Thank you for taking my feedback into account.
2 Likes
What’s up Greenstream!
I’m with you! I’m just joining in on the thread to stay updated on the discussion.
I feel that pain. People, I think, have no clue how much harm they’re potentially doing—especially the way out culture throws around the word “spam.”
I like your suggestions. They make so much sense that it’s a wonder why nothing like this has been implemented before. Especially since domain reputation is so crucial to both the end user as well as the esp.
That’s all I got.
Drew H
1 Like
I also like your suggestions. It will be much more easier and should have been implemented from the beginning.
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Hi @greenstreammarketing,
Thanks for the suggestion! I’ve passed this information over to the appropriate team. I can see how a broad term like “spam” doesn’t provide a whole lot of context for folks.
Vera
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This is why we don’t use the default form from AC. We simply do not spam. So anyone choosing that option is either lying or doesn’t understand the meaning.
This is our unsubscribe page with custom AC form (their email is auto-populated):
Thanks @CommunityAdmin and everyone else who chimed in, @bytologicss and @hudgemedia and @pmctraining.
Hey, @pmctraining, regarding your idea, we also use a customer Unsubscribe page, but we still have contacts who unsubscribe and in AC, under “Reason for unsubscribe” it sometimes says “Spam”. Do you have any way of explaining how this happens? Is it occurring for you too, despite your customer ubsub page?
I heard that when people use Gmail’s built in “Unsubscribe” button inside of Gmail, it reports the sender as SPAM. I can’t verify that, and it seems unlikely since Gmail does not offer the “Unsubscribe” button to spam email, only to promotional/newsletter emails. …But that’s what someone else on the ActiveCampaign FB group said.
And since our custom unsub page doesn’t have a “This is Spam” option, I’m not sure how else to explain the “Spam” as the reason for their unsubscribes being used by a, albeit small, portion of our ubsubscribers.
Any other ideas?
That is really weird @greenstreammarketing.
Since setting up our custom unsub page, we’ve never had anyone report as spam.
Also, I doubt Gmail would offer both a “report spam” and “unsubscribe” options if it was just going to report it as spam regardless. I like to think they are more ethical than that… but hey, who knew they would remove “don’t be evil” from their code of conduct. 
I can only think of one possible explanation. Is it possible your unsub link isn’t set up correctly? If you are inserting a basic link to your custom unsub page, AC will still automatically insert an unsubscribe link in your email. Send yourself a test to see if this is happening. If it is, you’ll have to edit the URL to make sure it contains %UNSUBSCRIBELINK% (see image)
That sends the contact directly to your custom AC unsub form - not a landing page.
If you’re already doing that, I would send a ticket to AC.
Good luck!
Kim
