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To product designers: In practice, you should really avoid using the "sending a reply email message" part. Especially these days when people have multiple ema
by nlh 14y ago
To product designers: In practice, you should really avoid using the "sending a reply email message" part. Especially these days when people have multiple email addresses, it can very quickly break down.
This happens often to me:
* Get email that I'd like to unsubscribe to
* Look for unsub info -- directed to "reply to this email" or, almost as bad, "enter your email address"
* Follow instructions
* Receive notice saying "Sorry, the email you entered [sent from] is not in our database"
Well thanks. We've gotten nowhere.
So the right way to design this should be a simple unsubscribe link w/ a unique token that executes the request upon clicking.
At worst, you can do what Constant Contact does and require the email address to be entered, but still provide a hint (i.e. "a....c@gmail.com"). This is still somewhat annoying, but I understand why they do it -- it likely reduces net unsubs since there's a second step involved. Pushing it, but thinking as a business owner as well, I get it.
- martincmartin 14y agoSending a reply email message can still work just fine. Assuming they include the original message in their reply, you just need to embed an ID in the original message, and look them up through that.
- brey 14y agoin which case you've invested the effort in making the stateful one-time token for unsubscription (is that a word?) - it's EASIER to enact that via a web link than parsing response emails
- akldfgj 14y agoIt's only easier if the recipient is web browsing, and wants to risk getting cookies and malware from a known-malicious entity...
- brey 14y agoif it's a known malicious entity I don't think I'd want to confirm that my email address is 'live' either way ... the majority use case here is that they're not malicious, merely spammy with good intentions.
- avar 14y agoI agree with your point about unsubscribe links, but I don't see how it's not immediately obvious which of your multiple E-Mail addresses you need to unsubscribe with since it's going to be the one the mail was sent to.
- user-id 14y agoExactly, even if email is forwarded, the To: should still be intact.
- Bruce_Adams 14y agoGmail accepts multiple forms of email addresses for a single account. first.last@gmail.com is identical to firstlast@gmail.com. I often get subscribed to email lists I don't want using a variant of Gmail address that I never use. Also, plenty of people using forwarding addresses; it may not be clear which address was the target.
- bad_user 14y agoWhat you're saying is odd, because I own a first.last@gmail.com email address and I know the person that owns the equivalent firstlast@gmail.com email address. Also, the email address to which the message was sent appears clearly in the "To:" header.
- grandpoobah 14y agoYou can put periods inside the username part of a gmail address and it still gets through. I'm not sure how what you're saying could be true? Maybe it wasn't always this way.
- fryguy 14y agoIn gmail: click the down arrow thingy, then "Show Original Email". Look for the line that says "Delivered-To: XXX@XXX.COM", and that the email it was delivered to.
- pimentel 14y agoIf you have an email A forwarding to B, on B there will be a "Delivered-To: B", I think. I never got to understand where on the email source I can find if it was to A or B.