Closing the door on customers

I signed up to Waterstone’s card a couple of months ago (I was caught off guard at the counter when asked if I wanted to sign up.) I said ‘Yes’, instantly regretting it as I knew I would never use it. If you use the card when you buy books, you get points; on top of that, you get subscribed to their newsletter when you sign up – all pretty standard stuff. After a couple of months of receiving these emails, I decided that I wasn’t particularly interested in receiving them anymore. And this is when this ordinary experience started to go astray. After clicking on the link to unsubscribe, I was presented with a page that allows you to ‘manage everything to do with your email subscriptions’ – their words. However, in truth, this page only lets you sign up to receive more emails or change the email address to which you receive the mail – not exactly enabling you to manage everything to do with your email subscriptions.
After spending a couple of minutes looking for the unsubscribe option, I gave up, instead opting to mark the newsletter as junk mail and let the spam checker take care of it for me. I have since come across another mailing list which gave me food for thought. It employs a different tact - it gives the user a choice whether they want to unsubscribe or try the emails for another couple of emails – the number determined by the user. Empowering the user in this way is more likely to keep customers happy and in doing so, retain them. In addition to the Waterstone’s loyalty card that I do not use, their emails are now going straight in to my junk mail – which effectively closes the door on any future correspondence from them. And although this experience hasn’t put me off Waterstone’s completely, I believe that as important as it is to get the user experience right when opting in, it is equally important to get it right when you are opting out, otherwise you risk annoying customers and shutting them out for good.