Et tu, SAP? How not to handle email marketing opt-out!

I get a _lot_ of email. Managing it effectively is very important to me. I pay particular attention to how partners and vendors help me manage the stream of email I receive from their marketing departments, even (in fact, especially) when it is opt-in (otherwise it’s just spam, right?…).

The other day I received an email from SAP, reminding me to sign up for a conference that I might be interested in. Here is what it looked like:

Here’s what’s going through my head: SAP, blah blah, conference, blah blah, did I subscribe to this, blah blah, I don’t really care about this conference, blah blah, in fact I am not that interested in SAP anymore, did I ever really subscribe to this thing, ah whatever just unsubscribe, hey it’s OK, SAP are legitimate, don’t worry about unsubscribing, so unsubscribe me!

Now, where’s that unsubscribe button? Hmm, oh yes, there in that 8 pt, barely discernable light gray font that I have had to point out for you near the bottom! Ok, well at least I found it. Let’s click on it and see what happens.

Now remember, I am trying to unsubscribe. SAP are asking me to fill in a form, with my full name, company name, email address and zip code. That sure feels like a lot of info, especially when I’m leaving, not arriving. As for email address, I have a few aliases, and of course I don’t remember which one I subscribed with and I’m worried that if I give the wrong one I will not end up unsubscribed. The clincher though? The fact that they say this will take up to 10 days. Are they nuts? That is way too long. Exactly what committee has to view and approve my removal from this list and sign off on it? It looks and sounds like SAP outsourced this to a 3rd party who is managing their list. I know that they can do better than this.

My advice to them, and to you also if you plan on doing email marketing:

0. Always, always, be opt-in (Hey, it’s the law now in Canada too, as well as the U.S.). Don’t use this to spam your customers and potentials.
0. Make it incredibly easy for people to unsubscribe from your list, one click and even pre-populate the email address if you can.
0. If you must use a 3rd party to handle these subscriptions, please make sure that they follow the same corporate email policies that you do (i.e. good ones)

Let me know if you have had any such convoluted email unsubscribe experiences by companies that should know better.