Unsubscribe
I’ve been spending the last month cleaning out my personal email by unsubscribing to all the random emails I get and don’t care about (Bath & Body Works, Victoria’s Secret, Livestrong*, etc.) as well as deleting folders and emails. Some of the companies make it kind of cumbersome to unsubscribe (you have to read through a bunch of crap and select different options instead of just clicking “unsubscribe me”) but I have been diligent in trying to figure it out.
Until today, none of the companies made it funny when I unsubscribed, but Groupon takes the cake for that. They present this video when you unsubscribe, asking you if you want to punish “Derrick – the guy who thought you’d enjoy receiving Groupon emails.”
The audio didn’t work, but basically, this guy says something to Derrick, punches him then walks away.
Then they ask you to resubscribe to make it up to Derrick.
I thought it was clever and it made me laugh. I won’t be resubscibing though. I don’t like how they changed their emails to make you click through to their site to see the deal. Too much work! It’s like all those blogs with the summary (abbreviated) feed in reader – too much work for me to click through. If you don’t catch me with your title and first paragraph, I probably won’t be reading it.
Do you unsubscribe to mass emails or just delete them out of your inbox? Are you less likely to read a blog that uses an summary (abbreviated) feed in reader?
*Actually, they make it really confusing to unsubscribe so I am not sure if I did that one or not.
Themocracy
Abbreviated/summarized feeds in google reader COMPLETELY irritate me. One blog that I quite like does that, and I never get less irritated having to click through. I downloaded an extension for Chrome that at least will expand the ones that are just shortened – but that does me no good when I’m not using chrome, of course.
And I just posted on facebook late last night that I was over groupon! The deals are… good, but the irritation of the spam just got to me. I also don’t like how many of the profits go to Groupon and NOT to the small business owners, which makes me unhappy.
You have to send me a link to that Chrome extension! I have been thinking about switching to Chrome. Hmm, I wonder if they have that plug-in for Firefox.
I try and unsubscribe to things but it’s SO time-consuming! I send it to my junk box so I don’t have to think about it any longer!
Ugh! I get so many junk emails- things I once subscribed to, but really don’t care about on a daily basis! Sometimes I get in the mood to unsubscribe, but I usually check my email first thing in the morning from my phone and it’s easier to just delete the crap.
I’ve “punished Derrick” before. I thought that was pretty clever. I get groupon emails at work and in my personal account but I’m thinking of getting rid of them in my personal account. Although I get minimal email on a daily basis anyway so it’s not really a big deal for me.
I did try to unsubscribe to wedding related emails I keep getting. I joined theknot.com a few weeks ago and some wedding affiliate keeps sending me emails! I thought I could just click “unsubscribe” but it linked to theknot.com to adjust my email preferences. I didn’t have time this morning to do that from my crappy email server at work so I’ll have to wait until I get home. Why do companies make it so difficult? Geesh.
Speaking of groupon, I got a 12 month subscription to Bon Appetit magazine today for $7! 🙂
That is the same thing that was happening to me – it linked to a site and had all of these options and questions – just let me unsubscribe!!!
I loved their unsubscribe, too!!
I started to unsubscribe since I get notices on Groupon on FB. But yeah cleaning up the mailbox is good!
I did that a few years ago and I LOVED it! it makes my inbox so much cleaner. Now, if CanadianMeds would stop sending me emails, my account would be perfect! 😉
Hahaha – that’s an awesome confirmation that you’ve been unsubscribed. Poor Derrick.
One thing I’ve been doing for a long time is to have an email address specifically for making online purchases (since I know I’ll wind up getting marketing info from the retailer later). So, I can pretty much ignore that account when I want to.
That said, I go through stages of unsubscribing. I probably need to do it again. Because right now? I get about 50-75 emails a day and only read 5 of them.
Yikes! That is too many! That is why I cleared mine out – I felt stressed seeing all of them, even though they could just be deleted.
That is hilarious!! I wish I were better about cleaning out junk like this. My Yahoo account is out of control, and there’s a pile of junk mail on my coffee table I need to go through.
I have long been the person whose blog may or may not show fully in the feed reader–although I am guessing not because honestly I have absolutely no idea how I am supposed to set that up/change it. I guess there are people not reading because I’m too dumb to know how to fix it!
Your blog shows up fine in reader! I don’t think you ever had the abbreviated feed. (In WordPress, it’s under Settings > Reading, then you have the option to show a summary or full text).
Ah! Thanks for the tip. That is good to know. 🙂 I just know a lot of people complain about the abbreviated feeds and I was always like…uh, I probably do this, I have no clue how to fix it!
Once I regained access to my kapgar5 account, I began realizing how much crap I was subscribed to. I’ve been unsubscribing as much as possible simply because I don’t want to have to wait for it to load on my iPhone before I can delete it. the thing I hate is when unsubscribe pages don’t work properly. Grrrrr.
haha thats awesome – more companies should make these things fun like that. It would totally make me re-think unsubscribing. This whole “lets make it as difficult as we can so maybe they just wont bother” thing really pisses me off. I should be able to just click a button instead of spending twenty minutes trying to figure out how to get myself off the mailing list.
I get way too many junk emails but I generally just do a mass delete each morning b/c I’ve been too lazy to go through the unsubscribe process.
As for blogs that make you click through out of Google Reader…I can’t stand it! There is currently only one blog left on my feed that I read and has that set up. The rest of them got deleted.
I don’t know what list I got on but my spam folder loads by the minute lately. Yes, I definitely unsubscribe. What makes any company think anyone has time or interest to read an email from them every single day?
Can’t stand it when unsubscribing is cumbersome.
Some of them actually had the option when unsubscribing to receive emails less often! So, only a few times a week, or once a week, or once a month. I just said forget it and unsubscribed completely.
Ugg i have unsubscribing! IT is the worst! I did see the groupon one though and it was funny.
I recently cleaned out some of the emails I was getting regularly but never reading, too. I think it made a huge difference on how full my mailbox was.
I don’t use a reader, I still do it the old fashioned way with a list of blogs I read on my side bar. Yeah, I’m old!
Gosh, I need to do this. I get so many darn newsletters and emails it takes forever to just delete them everyday. I know I wouldn’t miss them if they were gone. And i have say that I love their marketing ploy to get you to re-subscribe. LOL!
If you liked Groupon, maybe try this site: http://www.groupbuygirl.com/. I just found out about it today — my understanding is the woman who runs the site aggregates all the Groupon/LivingSocial/etc. deals for the day. You can sign up via email or subscribe to the RSS feed.
Unsubscribing is a losing battle for me. I try to keep up with it in my personal email, but as a member of the media, I am always ending up on weird mailing lists.
For the most part, everything I’ve unsubscribed from in the last 6 months has been pretty smooth. A few problematic companies to deal with, but that’s about it.
As for the specifics of Groupon, I should unsubscribe because you can only take so many carpet cleaning, teeth whitening and asian food deals. But every so often, a really cool one comes along that I find very useful (Red Box, The Gap, eBay), so I stay. I also subscribe to a couple local ones, plus Living Social. Mostly lackluster so I might have to wield that unsubscribe option soon.
As for a feed reader summary, i prefer to read the whole post in the feed reader in case the blog is white text on black background (hard on my eyes)
My work life has changed dramatically, and I want to unsubscribe to lots of blogs I used to read out of desperation for something to do. But I can’t seem to unsubscribe. I hate it. I don’t want to insult people, but their content is just not what I want right now. And I can’t figure out how to get them off my reader. So horrible, right?
I have been through that before too. I think people tend to understand when you stop reading. I know my content won’t always please everyone and I have been in to blogs then had it turn out later they weren’t for me!
I’m probably the last person on the planet who does not use a feed reader. I click from my blogroll, all old school.
Every once in a while I get on an unsubscribe kick to try to eliminate my junk email, but for whatever reason, they don’t go away. I think they purposefully make it confusing enough that you THINK you’ve unsubscribed, but really, you haven’t. So I delete, delete, delete…
i did the same thing!!!! i went through a lot of them and unsubscribed. what it did help me do, is stop being tempted by “great deals” that i was getting in emails. i’m not a big shopper, but the more i saw, the more i wanted!