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If you’re anything like us, your e-mail in-box can get pretty full, pretty quickly. Just when you think you’ve tamed the torrent of incoming messages, you open your mailbox to see it full once again. At times, it can seem like a never-ending battle of wills.

Over the past week, we decided to take determined action to reduce our volume of e-mail, a lot of which consisted of newsletters and mailing lists we signed up for over the years. While a lot of the lists still provide interesting content, the fact of the matter is that many times, the messages would simply be deleted without opening them. So, why keep receiving them only to have to take the time to send them to the trash folder?

One way to manage the clutter of a business e-mail box is to create a separate e-mail account specifically for subscriptions to newsletters and signing up for accounts on various sites. We decided to do this as one part of a two-pronged approach for the accounts we wanted to keep and the newsletters we wanted to continue to receive – all while keeping those messages separate from more important business-related correspondence. The other step would simply be to unsubscribe from the lists we weren’t reading any longer. Sensible (and easy) enough, or so you would think…

During the course of clicking “Unsubscribe” in the footer of numerous newsletters in our effort to trim the e-mail fat, we noticed some opportunities that many organizations were missing to retain their subscribers. In many cases, the options to manage a subscription involved a single option – Unsubscribe. In several cases, we didn’t want to be removed from the list altogether, but to change our subscribed e-mail address to one specifically earmarked to collect newsletter messages. Of course, there’s always the option to go back to the original web site, search out the “Subscribe” box on the site and sign up with the new e-mail address. However, from a busy person’s point of view, it’s a lot more time than someone might want to put in just to keep receiving a newsletter. Many might choose to just opt out and call it a day.

We see this as a missed opportunity to keep a subscriber that would require no more than including a second option allowing people to “Change E-Mail Address” or “Manage Your Subscription”, which some of the smarter marketers did include. In the case of one popular e-mail marketing provider (who shall rename nameless), however, we noticed a strange setup where clicking on “Manage Your Subscription” took you to a page where you had to enter your e-mail address only to be told they’ll send you instructions on managing your subscription. Um…Why not just let us do it when we’re already at your site? Doesn’t make a lot of sense from even the most basic usability standpoint.

We also noticed how many companies neglected to gain important knowledge about why a subscriber might be opting out of their lists to begin with. Was the content not interesting? Were the messages being sent too frequently? You can never be sure where you might be missing the mark unless you ask.

The moral of the story is that you never know how your everyday interactions with other businesses and organizations – whether in a personal or professional capacity – can teach you something valuable that can help you be more successful in marketing and operating your own business. So, keep your eyes open for ways other companies are doing things successfully and, in some cases, not so successfully. You’ll be able to take those lessons and put them to use in your own business, all while learning from the mistakes of others – without having to shoulder any financial investment that goes along with learning that lesson.

We know for sure that our future newsletters will include options for not only “Unsubscribe” but also a one-click “Manage Your Subscription” option so that we don’t lose valuable subscribers for completely-preventable reasons of poor usability.