In the current economic climate, marketers are looking to maximize their email efforts, and grow their opt-in lists. I’m getting a lot of questions from my clients lately regarding ways to take advantage of abandoners. In my last post, I explored abandonment triggered message tactics, but what about people who have abandoned your email marketing communications? As marketers, we know that if someone unsubscribed from your list, that you can’t mail them again, that no means no, right? Apparently the folks in Microsoft’s B2B division have a different idea. I was stunned to see this message (below) which was recently forwarded from a friend who unsubscribed a long time ago:
I’m almost speechless here. They do acknowledge that my friend asked not to be contacted by Microsoft, and they provide an incentive to re-subscribe by offering a nice set of golf balls and a $40 Callaway Golf gift certificate (note the fine print, only available for the first 250 named respondents though).
They claim they’ve improved the way they communicate, but they fall short in explaining just how exactly they’ve changed. Have they cut back on emailing as frequently, developed new content or features, or given their subscribers more flexibility and control in the types of content they want to receive? This seems a lot like the stereotypical bad ex-boyfriend or -girlfriend showing up with flowers or jewelry, and swearing “Baby, I’ve changed. Come back!” What a turn-off.
Worst of all, they don’t include an unsubscribe link. How can my friend communicate that he really, really doesn’t want to receive communications from them, and trust that he won’t be contacted again? Does he need a restraining order against this desperate ex?
Microsoft’s B2B marketing team probably considers this a re-opt-in campaign, but I consider this spam. Normally on the Bronto Blog, we try and give positive examples of email marketing best practices. If we see an example that is not up to par, we strive to provide good suggestions of how to improve upon whatever tactic, rather than just tearing it apart. In this situation, the best practice takeaway is: don’t do this. When people unsubscribe, let them go.
Julie Waite
Email Marketing Strategist at Bronto
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Wow. Shame on you Microsoft! However, this could also be an opportunity to engage MS in the discussion on the power of good, sound, strategic email marketing.
Julie - I’d love to hear if you get any traction on this one.
DJ Waldow
Director of Community at Blue Sky Factory
Not too shocking, MS has a history of blatantly ignoring the right thing to do. For a good example see my recent blog post: http://blog.bronto.com/2009/07/02/the-outlook-is-not-so-good/
This sounds like it could be in violation of CAN-SPAM (I’d have to check up on the details)… MS should take more care with these initiatives.
Hey DJ - We’ve got some inroads at MS, and will be looking for comment from them! Will let you know if we get any kind of response…
I think Adam is probably correct that this is a violation of CAN-SPAM, and on a couple of different levels.
Without parsing words or playing semantics, I think that a reasonable person would conclude that this is a promotional message. Sending promotional message to those that have opted-out (without opt-ing back in; I know, it’s circular), is a violation.
If there is no opt-out mechanism (circular again) in this message (because they obviously aren’t honoring the opt-out the first time), that would be another violation, as would not displaying a physical address.
But hey, if MS isn’t going to follow the basic rule of not mailing promotional offers to receipients that have opted-out, why bother following any of the other rules….
All good points, John. They did include their physical address in the footer, but no visible unsubscribe link. The only link in the footer is to their privacy statement: http://privacy.microsoft.com/en-us/default.mspx
This has some eyebrow-raising verbiage about opting out:
• You can stop the delivery of promotional e-mail from a Microsoft site or service by following the instructions in the e-mail you receive.
• To make proactive choices about how we communicate with you by e-mail, telephone, and postal mail, follow the instructions listed in the Communication Preferences of the full privacy statement. (apparently this is just the abbreviated version)
Of course this email had no instructions for bullet #1, and you have to go on a bit of a wild goose chase to find your Communication Preferences in the full privacy statement, which tells you to go to the Microsoft.com Profile Center, … and so on and so on. So much for the one-click unsubscribe!
Wow! Surprising that a company so big would make such a basic mistake.
It’s a shame really, this could have been a really good campaign, but the timing was all wrong. The creative is actually pretty nice and fits well with a B2B audience. The mistake is that they emailed people that they had already lost, who are now re-tweeting this post and sharing it via other tools because they annoyed them even further. Remember the Rule of 13, well now its more like 1300 thanks to social media.
What should have happened is they should have sent this to people still opted-into the list but that had gone dormant, the emotionally unsubscribed if you will. Perhaps they could have won some of those people back, re-engaged them and even got them to update their preferences with better data. Had they done that we all would have written posts about what a great re-engagement campaign this was.
Luke
Luke, your comment is spot-on! Great recommendation… maybe MS will learn from this mistake.