I usually opt-out of all marketing emails whenever I can, but my pet peeve is when e.g. my bank tells me about a new feature in their mobile app or something otherwise trivial, and claims it's a "important account-related" email that I can't opt out of.
To me, important is "We saw $5000 charges to your account from Elbonia, can you verify?". "Download our new app with new redesigned UI!" is not.
I always send a chastising reply. I know one message may not do much, but I've been surprised to occasionally get a response (usually from smaller vendors) promising to be more judicious in the future.
If enough people bitch at them for wasting eyeball time with trivial matters they might take notice...
I gave up and accept this as the normal standard. I just delete it and move on. Also gave up on “inbox 0.” That’s an unattainable goal. Better luck putting my self on the moon.
Whenever I have an issue with inbox 0, it is because I don't have a procedure in place for how to deal with a given email.
Stupid marketing emails are the easiest to deal with - the entire required procedure is to archive them.
Emails that are complex and require a lot more though, have multiple decisions and/or holders of stakes involved are currently the bane of my existence.
I setup a wildcard for my domain and then use promos.Company@mydomain for anything new I sign up for which makes it manageable. Plenty goes to my promotional wildcard, odd things to the wild wildcard (junked), and only important direct emails go to my actual inbox.
I have literally 10 emails just from my own Google Calendar reminding me to do things, 6 from HN replies, some from GitHub, some reminders for financial statements, and lots of miscellaneous notifications and mailing list emails... how in the world do you only get 10 emails per day when running a business?
You'd be surprised how much this underlying root cause is the source of so many online arguments over who is "right".
It's amazing how many people seem to think that the words on the screen are someone just down the road living a life virtually similar to theirs and not sitting in a country where holding hands is illegal in public and people get stoned to death in public.
Just because I am a user of some of your products is not permission to market me your other products.
Your example even reads like a marketing release. You've really somehow determined who my family and friends are, and you now support instant transfers to that specific group of people? If it were true it would be creepy, but it's unlikely. The reality is probably that you support instant transfers to other accounts at the bank, or within a network of banks, which is obviously useful, but you have no idea who might own accounts I would transfer to, and you're citing friends and family because it plays as more social. You know what the feature is, but you didn't describe it accurately--that's not exactly a lie, but it's certainly not honest either. The reason you're not just saying what you mean is because you're trying to sell me something you know I'm not that interested in.
It's marketing to me. It's fine if you communicate it via your website or app when I log in. But do not send me email, SMS or push notifications about these things if I don't want it, those should be reserved for "action required" things.
That's absolutely a marketing message. It's most likely a feature that I don't care about and benefits the company more than me. I don't need my phone to vibrate. If I received a transfer that's a different story.
I was reading CAN-SPAM and I came across the definition of "electronic mail message" in 15 USC § 7702(6)
> The term “electronic mail message” means a message sent to a unique electronic mail address.
Note that it doesn't specify anything about SMTP or any specific email protocols besides the address. I wonder if messaging systems that use email addresses as identifiers might unintentionally be subject? E.g. Ads shown through Facebook custom audiences with email address lists.
Email spam has went down mostly from self regulation.
ISPs are vigilant about blocking IP addresses with bad spam reputation. They also block IPs that have a sudden surge in volume.
Email marketers have to manage their own IP address reputations to be effective. If too many people mark your email as spam, then the IP could be blacklisted.
Not to discount the anti-spam algorithms. I religiously mark spam emails as spam. Gmail is quick at learning. 90% of my email is promotions which I never look at.
I just hope gmail had an auto unsubscribe. Most of the time unsubscribe doesn’t work since sites require humans to click some button or entire their email again.
I am far more worried about real mail spam. Can I do something about that ?
Something I've searched for clarity on but have never been able to find is differentiating between notifications and marketing email.
If you join a social network, does that network need to get your explicit consent to email you notifications about events or actions that might happen on the platform such as a new followers, connection requests and so on? I understand that they would need to for marketing related emails like recommendations on who to follow etc but do event / action notifications fall into that same marketing category?
Technically that would fall under action-based email aka Transaction email. Postmarkapp has good explanation [1]
It means user triggered some action, like recently signed up or message you so you receive notification of new message awaiting you. This would be different than email marketing - when social network decides one day they want to inform you about the newest features. You didn't ask for that email and it wasn't specific to your actions but rather bulk message send en-masse.
CAN-SPAM has worked well in that I generally don't get random spam anymore. But, the cold marketing emails. Woooooow, the cold marketing emails. Several of them, Every. Day. It's epidemic in my inbox.
I don't know how much is CAN-SPAM and how much is that SPAM filtering became so effective that old-fashioned SPAM basically doesn't work any more (if it ever did).
>Several of them, Every. Day.
Lucky you. Between the fact that I'm on PR lists, I attend events all the time, I download various company info for my job, etc. (Plus companies I've ordered stuff from etc.) I probably get closer to 100/day.
Periodically I make a point of systematically opting out of mailings I can't imagine ever caring about. But mostly I rely on Gmail tabs and just skimming my email for anything I actually care about.
If you read this as a guide for how to do email marketing (which the authors, an email marketing company, clearly want you to do), then you're part of the problem. These regulations don't exist for you to edge up to the line and spam people within their margins. Spam is still spam, and anyone who sends it is an asshole. That's all there is to it.
As far as I know CCPA isn't enforced until 2020, but yes, it eventually should. We'll also try and cover more EU countries soon. Pull requests welcome in the meantime.
What if I send a similar offering to someone looking for explicit contact e.g. a Job Offer with a contact email receives a mail from me with a remote service instead of a in person worker
I think the "Consent required" column for Germany is wrong. Just because you have an existing business relationship doesn’t allow you to send marketing emails. Marketing usually requires an additional opt-in (under GDPR). Although in practice, I see this being violated quite often. Correct me if I’m wrong.
In B2B the rules are bit different at least with GDPR. Direct sales / marketing via email is possible without any consent or previous relationship. It has to be targeted to the right person in the company (the person who makes decisions about buying whatever you're selling).
The only reasonable explanation for this I've seen is that some of these companies are sending 10s or 100s of thousands of marketing emails, so they use large queuing systems. Sometimes these batch jobs are queued up and fired off some time in advance. 7 days give them a window to cover this queue length.
Sure they could add a 'blacklist' check on the send action level, though.
It's a simple field. I don't care how many emails. It's trivial at best and blatantly illegal at worst. Remove me this second from your spam list. If I unsubscribe and still receive additional emails I report it as spam and to the fcc.
I'm sick of email spam. It doesn't take 7 days. It's a simple database update. "do not send to this person". Done. Its a dark pattern and should be punished.
I have suggested against shitty companies that spam people like. They lost a year contract. 7 days my ass. If you can't get your database working I'd be happy to help.
> CAN-SPAM, unlike most other email marketing legislations, works on an opt-out basis. There is no requirement for consent to contact subscribers based in the USA. You must make it clear how to opt-out and honor those requests promptly, within ten business days.
To me, important is "We saw $5000 charges to your account from Elbonia, can you verify?". "Download our new app with new redesigned UI!" is not.