I deal with a lot of spam everyday. I have a finely tuned āspam senseā that works somewhat like Spider-Manās spidey sense, only much less useful in heroic situations. (āDuck! Here comes another c1al1s advertā¦ā) A corporate website of any form is an attempt to have a conversation with me. If you trigger that spam sense, you seriously damage my opinion of the conversation. Hereās two big pointers that should have been learned 5 years ago, but may need to be refreshed from time to time:
- Always, always, always make any email distribution lists opt-in. In an application process, auto-checking an opt-in āon my behalfā is the exact same as an opt-out,, it is no longer an opt-in because if I ignore it or miss it I suddenly get unsolicited mail. Repeat after me: a preselected opt-in is no longer an opt-in, no matter how friendly the language next to the checkbox, it is an opt-out. My time is valuable to meā¦ I will either spend the time to read and ponder your distribution or I will uncheck the box. I will not do both if you trigger that spam sense when skimming.
- Once I make a selection or choice: donāt question the selection or choice and certainly donāt try to do one last upsell to some ābetterā choice. The more upsells, the more it feels like you are trying to spam me to death.
Again, both of those points should be obvious, and are very easy to keep in mind. If your company violates them, your marketers and/or web staff (and I know which one I typically bet on being in charge of these decisions) have some āsplaininā to do as to why they hate your customers.