Journoz: Updates for Australian Journalists

Publish and be spammed?

While Web usability expert Jakob Nielsen believes email newsletters still have plenty of mileage in them, he warns that people who don't want to get them any more often block them as spam rather than go through the bother of unsubscribing. As Nielsen warns: "The fact that many users will declare a newsletter to be spam when they tire of it has terrifying implications: legitimate newsletters might get blacklisted and thus ISPs might block their delivery to other subscribers. This is a compelling reason to increase the usability of the unsubscribe process: better to lose a subscriber than to be listed as spam." Certainly anything that makes it easy for people to get off mailing lists they are sick of would be good. All too often unsubscribing doesn't work, or results in even more unwanted mail. Newsletter publishers need to address this. The full piece, "Targeted Email Newsletters Show Continued Strength" is at www.useit.com/alertbox/20040217.html. Posted by belinda at February 26, 2004 11:03 AM

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