Top Firms Fumble Opt Outs: Return Path

More than 10 years since e-mail became a viable sales-and-marketing channel, many of the best-known marketers in the U.S. handle opt-outs poorly, according to a study released today by deliverability firm Return Path.

Granted, the study was of just 45 companies, but it was of 45 mostly household names, such as Wal-Mart, Staples, Sears, Disney, the New York Times, Kraft, Fisher Price, BMW, Expedia, Hertz and Marriott.

According to Return Path, 20% of those surveyed sent more e-mail after acknowledging the unsubscribe, which is not against the law, but does have the potential to tarnish the companies’ brands and their e-mail reputations. Consumers who have opted out are far more likely to report additional e-mail as spam, putting the marketer at greater risk of getting messages blocked by ISPs or diverted into would-be recipients’ spam folders.

Even worse, five of the firms continued sending e-mail more than 10 days after the unsubscribe request, a violation of the Can Spam Act.

Also, just two of the marketers offered subscribers the ability to change their preferences, such as the frequency of messages they receive. And just five companies offered an e-mail change-of-address option.

“There’s a huge opportunity in the opt-out process that I was surprised so few marketers are leveraging as fully as they could,” said Bonnie Malone, director of strategic services for Return Path. “And the fact that some marketers were mailing after that 10-day window was rather shocking. These are not small companies, these are well-known brands. And that’s not a new rule. It’s been around for several years now.”

The federal Can Spam Act requires marketers to honor e-mail opt-outs within 10 days or risk fines.

According to Malone, the experience a subscriber has when opting out of an e-mail program can be as important as the experience they had opting in. After all, she said, just because they don’t want any more e-mail doesn’t necessarily mean they’re no longer a customer.

“If that last impression is negative, you may lose them altogether as a customer,” she said. “Even if they don’t maintain a subscriber relationship with you, you want it to be as positive as possible from a branding experience, if nothing else. The end [of the e-mail relationship] is just as important as the beginning.”

Besides making the opt-out process pleasant, she said, marketers could offer an exit survey to spot shortcomings in their programs and fix them.

“Surveying can help you find out how valuable your e-mails are to them or if there are frequency issues,” she said.

Malone added that anecdotally, she has found that most marketers are keenly aware of their e-mail shortcomings but are struggling with IT issues.

“I’ve spoken to a number of marketers who voiced concern over their IT practices,” she said. “They know they have IT system challenges in their organizations and they’re admitting: ‘We know we have some shortcomings and we aren’t able to synchronize data as smoothly and as quickly as we’d like,’” she said.

“It’s something that many companies are still trying to figure out from a data perspective, especially when you have a multichannel company,” Malone added. “They may have been in the retail business for 100 years, but online is their newest channel, and they’re still going through growing pains there.”