You Have 10 Days
According to the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, if you sign up to receive emails from a website, they have to include an "Unsubscribe" link at the bottom of each email. This is so companies have to continually try and earn the right to our attention. If their emails ever become more of an annoyance than an interest, we have the right to remove ourselves from their list.
According to the CAN-SPAM Act, once a customer clicks that link, they must be taken to a page where their email will be removed from the system. You can ask them why they chose to leave (if you must), but after they confirm the request, you have 10 days to remove them from your system and not email that person ever again. (unless they subscribe again.)
Here's the question: during those 10 days, should a company continue to send them emails, in the hopes of converting them back into a subscriber?
Marketing is not my department, but regardless, I'm going to weigh in on the matter: You should stop sending emails to that person as soon as they ask to be removed.
There's a grace period of 10 days that exists from a legal standpoint, but the technology is there to make this kind of thing almost instantaneous. If I click an "Unsubscribe" link in an email, I know that it doesn't take long for this information to trickle through your system and update what's in the database. You can't fool me, man...I'm a programmer.
Some marketers like to believe that it makes sense to treat people who have unsubscribed as a "warm market". Instead of trying to figure out what made them leave in the first place, they take liberties with people's permission, figuring that it can't hurt to send emails to that person for the next 10 days. If 1 person out of a 1000 ends up changing their minds, they feel (notice I didn't say "think") it was worth it.
This is not a good way to try and win back people who have opted to leave. They've turned their back on you. What you're doing, as a marketer, is ensuring that the doorknob hits them in the ass on the way out.
According to the CAN-SPAM Act, once a customer clicks that link, they must be taken to a page where their email will be removed from the system. You can ask them why they chose to leave (if you must), but after they confirm the request, you have 10 days to remove them from your system and not email that person ever again. (unless they subscribe again.)
Here's the question: during those 10 days, should a company continue to send them emails, in the hopes of converting them back into a subscriber?
Marketing is not my department, but regardless, I'm going to weigh in on the matter: You should stop sending emails to that person as soon as they ask to be removed.
There's a grace period of 10 days that exists from a legal standpoint, but the technology is there to make this kind of thing almost instantaneous. If I click an "Unsubscribe" link in an email, I know that it doesn't take long for this information to trickle through your system and update what's in the database. You can't fool me, man...I'm a programmer.
Some marketers like to believe that it makes sense to treat people who have unsubscribed as a "warm market". Instead of trying to figure out what made them leave in the first place, they take liberties with people's permission, figuring that it can't hurt to send emails to that person for the next 10 days. If 1 person out of a 1000 ends up changing their minds, they feel (notice I didn't say "think") it was worth it.
This is not a good way to try and win back people who have opted to leave. They've turned their back on you. What you're doing, as a marketer, is ensuring that the doorknob hits them in the ass on the way out.