Email from Apple - inviting me to unsubscribe?
I received a very surprising email from Apple this morning, which you can read in full at http://email.euro.apple.com/apple/servicemail/version1/uk/index_uk.html
Initially I was surprised to receive this: it’s practically an invite to unsubscribe from their list, but on reflection I think it’s probably a good idea.
Why did they send the email?
First of all, research has shown that people trust email from companies that make opting out easy. Apple have done that pretty strongly with this message.
Secondly, it’s probably about list quality. They can send an email like this to a lot more people than a marketing message: it’s a customer service message after all. All the emails that bounce will have their addresses taken off the list, reducing bounce rates and improving the quality of the list. High open rates and response rates are worth a lot more than a big, stagnant email list.
All the people who opt-out were probably disengaged anyway, so removing them will also improve open and response rates in the long-term.
In the end, if you send an email to a million people, and half of them ignore it, you would have had better results if you’d removed that half million before you sent the mail.
That all sounds very smart to me.
You forgot to mention the law.
The law has something to do with these emails too.
There is law on this as you mention, but including an unsubscribe link in an email is generally agreed as “good enough” from this point of view. If you read this article you will see it says “The Directive also says that businesses must consult regularly and respect the opt-out registers before sending unsolicited commercial communications. In fact, the UK decided to omit this provision when implementing the Directive. The Government considers that industry self-regulation and codes of conduct already give effective protection to the recipients of spam.”
What law should apply here? The UK law? The US law? Some European law?
I’m not sure.
In France (don’t quote me on this, I’m not 100% sure), senders of newsletters and such are supposed to send an email similar to the one you received once a year.
I’m not a lawyer, but I believe it is the law in the country the company sending the email is located in. In this case, that’s Apple Eire.
It does get more complicated with the EU, but I think the law of the company’s home country still applies.