Spam or Not Spam? Saas Usability Fail

Is this spam or not?

Last week, in another failed attempt to get my email cleaned out, I unsubscribed from a bunch of emails. Most of them display screens saying you’ve been unsubscribed. Some ask you why. Some give you options for reducing or changing what you’re subscribed to, just in case you don’t want out of ALL of their emails. One even tried to make me login to unsubscribe. What?

This one, though. I didn’t see this one until today, when I was fishing NON-spam things out of my Spam folder…Who did this?

1. So I’m not unsubscribed from something I asked to be unsubscribed from? Um. Not really cool that yet another email was sent that I have to respond to in order to be unsubscribed from what I already chose to be unsubscribed from.
2. If this IS a legit email, trying to get me to confirm I meant it, how would I even know what to change my mind about? There is ZERO identifying information on this email anywhere. If it is legit, it means the original organization is using third party software to manage their unsubscribes…in which chase, looks like they didn’t bother to fill out the customer profile information for that software, so when it was used, someone could identify the origin.
3. Or is it spam? Other similar messages in the past were reported as spam. Perhaps those messages were reported as spam by other users like me who don’t know why they got this email. In that case, if that third party software IS legitimate, they shouldn’t let customers use it without filling out their profile information. If the company (nameservices.net) gets reported as spam by enough people for it to go directly to my spam box like this, that seriously devalues their offering. The user who unsubscribed from their customer’s email isn’t going to be unsubscribed. If they can figure out who they unsubscribed from in the first place, the user is going to complain to the customer, who’s going to be upset about paying for an unsubscribe service that isn’t working…lol. I can just picture the customer support loops now.

What SHOULD have happened

Here’s the process that should have happened.

1. Nameservices.net should have required enough profile information so that there was some indicator on the email of who they sent it on behalf of.

2. The company who’s email list I was possibly signed up for should have put something in the unsubscribe content, so I could tell who they were WITHOUT clicking on a link.

3. I should not be getting emails to make sure I want to unsubscribe from an email. The most that should have happened is that I should have been directed to a follow up page confirming my request.

Unless of course, this is really spam. But who knows, right, so instead of clicking on anything, I’m just writing a blog about yet another piece of software that someone didn’t test or didn’t think all the way through before releasing it….or I’m complaining about spam. See how torn I am? Think I’ll just publish this…and delete that email forever without knowing one way or another.