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This has been posted a few times and while it's a good story I find the general root cause highly unlikely to be the case most of the time. CAN-SPAM gives a 10

This has been posted a few times and while it's a good story I find the general root cause highly unlikely to be the case most of the time. CAN-SPAM gives a 10-day window to honor the unsubscribe and if a marketing team can shovel more marketing your way for another ten days you'd better believe they will.

xnyan 5y ago
If I get an email after I've requested them to stop, I simply mark it as spam and I never see them again. Simple.
- AbuAssar 5y ago
  Second that, the first email I get after I unsubscribe will be reported as SPAM
- Dove 5y ago
  Same. Rude and disrespectful marketing is a kill file offense.
that_guy_iain 5y ago
> if a marketing team can shovel more marketing your way for another ten days you'd better believe they will. Only for crap marketing teams. At the point you ask you be removed you stop being a good lead. The entire point of an email newsletter is to nuture leads. Doing what you suggest they do would be the oppisite. And reduce their metrics therefore making them look worse. Why would anyone choose to make their metrics/KPIs look worse? Not only that it increases the chances of spam reports and marketing 100% care about deliverability.
- dhosek 5y ago
  You're assuming rational behavior. Statistically speaking half the population has an IQ under 100¹. There's an online big&tall clothing retailer who have a great site. Exactly what I wanted: I can search by size (my trouser size is often just above regular size stores' inventory and just below b&t stores' inventory), decent enough prices,² good sizing guides, even some variety in colors and styles. I was ready to become a regular customer. On check out I was asked if I wanted to join their mailing list. I clicked no. The next day I got a marketing email. I clicked the unsubscribe button. The next day I got *another* marketing email. I called them up and made it clear that if I got another email they'd lost me as a customer forever and they'd better make damned sure they got me off their mailing list. You can guess what came in the email the next day. I marked them as spam and set up the kill it with fire rule in my gmail³ so that I'd never see another email from them again. I tell this story mostly because it's not an atypical experience. You'd think people would know better than to do things like this, but you'd be thinking wrong. A lot of marketing people see email as a free way to reach prospects and don't seem to understand the negative consequences of irritating customers like this. --- 1. That is assuming that IQ variation truly is a normal distribution. In all the critiques of IQ, whether it's actually normally distributed seems to never come up. 2. Which as anyone reading this who's big and/or tall will know, means far more than you folks near the center of the size bell curve pay for clothes. I'm going to break our code of silence for a moment and say that every time we buy clothes, us b&t people loathe you center of the bell curve–sized people with a passion. 3. Established because Avis doesn't even give an opt-out link in their crap marketing emails.
  - LegionMammal978 5y ago
    Regarding your first footnote, IQ is assumed to be a normal distribution since that is how it is defined: Measure a factor g of general intelligence, then translate its distribution of values onto a Gaussian distribution with a mean of 100 and standard deviation of 15. Since IQ is a relative measurement against the population, it can be distributed however one likes. That's not to say, though, that absolute intelligence (however one chooses to define it) is necessarily normally distributed.
    - dhosek 5y ago
      I guess my biggest question is whether the distribution is symmetrical. I think mathematically¹, that if you do something like sum n values that are uniformly distributed from 1…k, you'll tend towards a bell curve as n ∞, so I have no reason to believe that you wouldn't get something like that with IQ tests, but I have a hard time convincing myself that it's necessarily so. Then again, whatever deviation from a pure normal distribution would probably not be dramatic and the median = 100 line would hold up regardless thanks to the definition of 100. --- 1. I've taught basic stats in the past, but my own stats education is rudimentary since I avoided anything that even vaguely approached applied mathematics in my mathematical education.
      - barrkel 5y ago
        Intelligence distribution may not be symmetrical. I don't think it is, in fact I'm not sure what that would even mean. High intelligence means doing some things faster and low intelligence means not being able to do some things at all. The only way to symmetry or otherwise is via a quantification which converts these things to a scalar measure, and then distribution becomes a tweakable property of the quantification when tested against a population. And that's why IQ (not intelligence, they are not synonyms) is normally distributed. It is a tuned quantification, designed to be normally distributed. If it doesn't turn out that way, there is some divergence between the population it was tuned for and the sample you're measuring.
  - theonemind 5y ago
- pokot0 5y ago
  I mean, dark patterns are all the rage nowadays in "good" marketing teams. We don't know how this affect their KPI as it is most likely different for every mailing list, depending on customer base and other factors. Using KPIs is a wonderful way of justifying neglecting common sense.
- rtkwe 5y ago
  The issue is with email marketing the cost is basically zero to do a few more attempts at conversion and since you're already moving out of the potential lead pool throwing a few last second pitches your way is pretty low risk.
Semaphor 5y ago
I don’t see how US law is relevant for a UK bank.
- hnbad 5y ago
  GDPR gives a 30 days window for erasure requests. I can't seem to find any time frames in the UK's law about e-mail marketing or in those for other EU countries for that matter.
  - pieno 5y ago
    That’s the right to full erasure. Revoking consent for processing your data for marketing purposes should be possible at any time and as easy as giving consent: “The data subject shall have the right to withdraw his or her consent at any time. The withdrawal of consent shall not affect the lawfulness of processing based on consent before its withdrawal. Prior to giving consent, the data subject shall be informed thereof. It shall be as easy to withdraw as to give consent.” (Article 7(3) GDPR) That does not mean that you cannot take a few days to process the revocation, but it does mean that you should handle it as soon as possible and the burden is on you as data processor to ensure you still have valid (non-revoked) consent before sending another mail.
- nkozyra 5y ago
  I wasn't applying it to a UK bank.
legitster 5y ago
> if a marketing team can shovel more marketing your way for another ten days you'd better believe they will. Yeah, this is flat out wrong. When you unsubscribe we want you out of there. You've already told us you are not a high value lead, and the hit we would get for email reputation is very much not worth it. If you hit that unsubscribe link and you are not immediately unsubscribed, something is broken.

xnyan 5y ago

If I get an email after I've requested them to stop, I simply mark it as spam and I never see them again. Simple.

AbuAssar 5y ago
Second that, the first email I get after I unsubscribe will be reported as SPAM
Dove 5y ago
Same. Rude and disrespectful marketing is a kill file offense.

that_guy_iain 5y ago

> if a marketing team can shovel more marketing your way for another ten days you'd better believe they will. Only for crap marketing teams. At the point you ask you be removed you stop being a good lead. The entire point of an email newsletter is to nuture leads. Doing what you suggest they do would be the oppisite. And reduce their metrics therefore making them look worse. Why would anyone choose to make their metrics/KPIs look worse? Not only that it increases the chances of spam reports and marketing 100% care about deliverability.

dhosek 5y ago
You're assuming rational behavior. Statistically speaking half the population has an IQ under 100¹. There's an online big&tall clothing retailer who have a great site. Exactly what I wanted: I can search by size (my trouser size is often just above regular size stores' inventory and just below b&t stores' inventory), decent enough prices,² good sizing guides, even some variety in colors and styles. I was ready to become a regular customer. On check out I was asked if I wanted to join their mailing list. I clicked no. The next day I got a marketing email. I clicked the unsubscribe button. The next day I got *another* marketing email. I called them up and made it clear that if I got another email they'd lost me as a customer forever and they'd better make damned sure they got me off their mailing list. You can guess what came in the email the next day. I marked them as spam and set up the kill it with fire rule in my gmail³ so that I'd never see another email from them again. I tell this story mostly because it's not an atypical experience. You'd think people would know better than to do things like this, but you'd be thinking wrong. A lot of marketing people see email as a free way to reach prospects and don't seem to understand the negative consequences of irritating customers like this. --- 1. That is assuming that IQ variation truly is a normal distribution. In all the critiques of IQ, whether it's actually normally distributed seems to never come up. 2. Which as anyone reading this who's big and/or tall will know, means far more than you folks near the center of the size bell curve pay for clothes. I'm going to break our code of silence for a moment and say that every time we buy clothes, us b&t people loathe you center of the bell curve–sized people with a passion. 3. Established because Avis doesn't even give an opt-out link in their crap marketing emails.
- LegionMammal978 5y ago
  Regarding your first footnote, IQ is assumed to be a normal distribution since that is how it is defined: Measure a factor g of general intelligence, then translate its distribution of values onto a Gaussian distribution with a mean of 100 and standard deviation of 15. Since IQ is a relative measurement against the population, it can be distributed however one likes. That's not to say, though, that absolute intelligence (however one chooses to define it) is necessarily normally distributed.
  - dhosek 5y ago
    I guess my biggest question is whether the distribution is symmetrical. I think mathematically¹, that if you do something like sum n values that are uniformly distributed from 1…k, you'll tend towards a bell curve as n ∞, so I have no reason to believe that you wouldn't get something like that with IQ tests, but I have a hard time convincing myself that it's necessarily so. Then again, whatever deviation from a pure normal distribution would probably not be dramatic and the median = 100 line would hold up regardless thanks to the definition of 100. --- 1. I've taught basic stats in the past, but my own stats education is rudimentary since I avoided anything that even vaguely approached applied mathematics in my mathematical education.
    - barrkel 5y ago
      Intelligence distribution may not be symmetrical. I don't think it is, in fact I'm not sure what that would even mean. High intelligence means doing some things faster and low intelligence means not being able to do some things at all. The only way to symmetry or otherwise is via a quantification which converts these things to a scalar measure, and then distribution becomes a tweakable property of the quantification when tested against a population. And that's why IQ (not intelligence, they are not synonyms) is normally distributed. It is a tuned quantification, designed to be normally distributed. If it doesn't turn out that way, there is some divergence between the population it was tuned for and the sample you're measuring.
- theonemind 5y ago
pokot0 5y ago
I mean, dark patterns are all the rage nowadays in "good" marketing teams. We don't know how this affect their KPI as it is most likely different for every mailing list, depending on customer base and other factors. Using KPIs is a wonderful way of justifying neglecting common sense.
rtkwe 5y ago
The issue is with email marketing the cost is basically zero to do a few more attempts at conversion and since you're already moving out of the potential lead pool throwing a few last second pitches your way is pretty low risk.

Semaphor 5y ago

I don’t see how US law is relevant for a UK bank.

hnbad 5y ago
GDPR gives a 30 days window for erasure requests. I can't seem to find any time frames in the UK's law about e-mail marketing or in those for other EU countries for that matter.
- pieno 5y ago
  That’s the right to full erasure. Revoking consent for processing your data for marketing purposes should be possible at any time and as easy as giving consent: “The data subject shall have the right to withdraw his or her consent at any time. The withdrawal of consent shall not affect the lawfulness of processing based on consent before its withdrawal. Prior to giving consent, the data subject shall be informed thereof. It shall be as easy to withdraw as to give consent.” (Article 7(3) GDPR) That does not mean that you cannot take a few days to process the revocation, but it does mean that you should handle it as soon as possible and the burden is on you as data processor to ensure you still have valid (non-revoked) consent before sending another mail.
nkozyra 5y ago
I wasn't applying it to a UK bank.

legitster 5y ago

> if a marketing team can shovel more marketing your way for another ten days you'd better believe they will. Yeah, this is flat out wrong. When you unsubscribe we want you out of there. You've already told us you are not a high value lead, and the hit we would get for email reputation is very much not worth it. If you hit that unsubscribe link and you are not immediately unsubscribed, something is broken.