• by Sean Hargrave , Staff Writer, November 4, 2016

It's a curious thing, and it can only be rooted in a mindset that is so focussed on sales that the implications of email marketing actions do not become immediately clear. A year ago, nearly all retailers went into the festive season with clear and unambiguous unsubscribe links on emails. This year, only four in five do.

The research from the Online Trust Alliance  took in the globe's top 200 retailers to see how up front they are at letting customers bid them farewell. The fact that only four in five offer their lists a clear exit door is pretty damning on the one in five who do not. However, there was a tiny piece of good news. Just over four in five retail brands immediately stopped sending emails once they were asked to cease, which is a small increase on last year's proportion. Other than that, however, you can't help but wonder what's going through the minds of the one in five who choose to obscure the leaving process.

OK -- so nobody wants to see customers and prospects leave, but if retailers took a minute to think it through, they would almost certainly decide to go the honourable route. There's the very obvious plus point that nobody wants customers to feel trapped and it's better to be seen to be doing the right thing.

This is more than an ethical debate, however -- it's practical. No brand wants to be ignored and deleted. The higher the proportion of email recipients that never interact with your messages the more spammy your email operations will appear to ISPs. This has major implications for deliverability, even among people who may want to hear from you. Then there's the obvious issue around metrics. It may be a debatable tactic but email is invariably measured by open rate. So the more people you have ignoring emails, the worse it is both for deliverability and in-house metrics. You can end up looking bad to ISPs as well as your CMO.

There's another consideration. The OTA research also showed that options on unsubscribe links were also decreasing. Decisions are increasingly becoming an on or off option with no feedback. This is clearly self-defeating because if a person decides to hit unsubscribe it must be worth asking them if they just want to turn off emails for a few months. If they want to leave, doesn't it make sense to ask why?

Clearly, there is a discussion that must happen inside retailer operations so the wider organisation can understand the implications of a short-term gain. Sure, lists may stay longer, but that actually could be doing more harm than good in the long term.