eric rochow

I’m sorry, but this drives me up the wall. And its not just the Foundation Center that does this, but we’re going to use them as an example.

The Foundation Center is a great organization, they run a number of free resource libraries where you can get all sorts of information on grants, fundraising, etc. They also offer classes and have great online resources.

They are also prolific at sending email if you subscribe to one of their newsletters or set up a search criteria. Their emails offer classes, services, news, etc. Its all good, but to me, its too much, and grant writing is no longer something I’m interested in.

I’ve tried to unsubscribe from their lists several times, but they don’t make it easy. They want you to log in to unsubscribe. Here’s the problem with this.

• First, one should not have to log in to unsubscribe. People who want to unsubscribe probably lost interest in your newsletter long ago and no longer remember their log in information.

• Second, to make it difficult to unsbuscribe can make the person frustrated, and lose any goodwill you might have with a potential donor or user who might in the future want to return to your site.

Like myself, many people subscribe to news using an email alias, and other sites have something like this at the bottom of the page “To unsubscribe to this email, reply to this email with ‘unsubscribe’ in the subject line” That does many people no good, as your email alias is not used by your email program.

So, to not frustrate people, and keep the goodwill and trust you have built with a user, make it REAL EASY to unsubscribe. Feedburner and Constant Contact both use a one-click unsubscribe, and so should everyone else. Keep that goodwill, keep people like me from blogging about your poor unsubscribe method.