March 4th, 2012
Rant on Email Notifications
One of the worst-kept secrets in startup land is that emails are among the best drivers of user engagement and re-engagement. When you have those “what is the secret to X company’s success?” conversations, the answer for Facebook, Groupon, and countless others almost always includes mention of email-related notification features.
Perhaps it is because I am a curious early-adopter who will sign up for anything that sounds remotely interesting, but I recently decided that these auto-opt-in notifications were providing negligible value.
Cue the unsubscribe binge. I wanted to be social on my own terms.
So I would like to humbly present a few suggestions for making these sorts of notifications more awesome for the people who want off your lists. Thinking “oh they’re leaving so not worth our time” is NOT THE RIGHT ATTITUDE here. Here’s a one-sentence user anecdote: I unsubscribed from Groupon, 4 months later re-subscribed, bought some stuff, unsubscribed again. I am still a customer. Their unsubscribe page is funny and was called the “Best Unsubscribe Ever” by Wired. They at least pretend to care about you, even on the way out.
Think of it this way: giving the immediate FFFFFUUUUUUUU- just because someone wants to kind of protect his/her inbox is severing ties with a potential future customer or user. Unsubscribers ARE NOT people who hate your service and will never come back again. I get it that startups need to keep their numbers up, but this can be done without pissing off your users in the process.
Let me also say that I have utilized email notifications before and they can be extremely effective if implemented correctly. I am not anti-email; quite the opposite. I love email, think it is fantastic, and plan to utilize email notifications in many future endeavors.
But I know that we can do better.
Here are my four recommendations:
1. One Click Unsubscribe – Do not put email settings behind a sign-in screen.
There are services that I signed up for 10 months ago, don’t use, and don’t remember the password. Are you really going to make me go to “forgot password”, click through from an email, go back to the notifications page, and THEN unsubscribe?
Instead, a much better idea would be to make the unsubscribe link unique, and tied to that user’s specific email address. This way, if you click through directly from your email, you are taken to the notifications page. While maybe not as “secure”, the experience is significantly better for the user.
2. Have a “unsubscribe from all” check box.
There is one New York startup that is a notorious offender here. They make you click probably 4 times to unsubscribe from *each* type of notification they send. I have seen much twitter rage about said startup, and hope someday they fix the issue.
If you have 1 or 20 types of email notifications, no matter how customizable, please pretty please have a large button/check-box at the top that says “unsubscribe from all”. The best implementations do it this way: once this box is checked, then magically all the boxes below become unchecked all at once. It is grand.
3. Make your unsubscribe page mobile-friendly.
People read their email on their phones.
This should not be news.
Please make your page mobile-friendly. This means: readable text, big buttons, big form fields, no pinching.
Not sure how? Read up on the awesomeness of mobile-friendly design here, here and here.
4. Do not send an unsubscribe confirmation email.
These are totally unnecessary. Just don’t send me any more emails. Make sure to say something like “Thanks you are unsubscribed” or “unsubscribe confirmed” on the settings page, and I will trust that you’ve taken care of it.
That’s all. I present these suggestions with love and please know that they are from someone who geniunely enjoys experimenting with new products.
Writing this post has made me realize that us product-types spend an incredible amount of time on the first-user-hand-holding, and maybe not enough time on the soft-landing-exit. Something to think about.