Spent a few hours (read: obsessively too long) tidying up my personal email inbox today, striving towards the eventual goal of Inbox Zero. Whilst working through the several thousand emails I realized “Wow, I have a crap load of spam, I should probably unsubscribe”. Emails from Top Table and Play.com are a devil on my shoulder – ohh look how much we’ve got on offer, come, spend all your money…etc.

This gave me the good fortune to see how 30 or so websites handle opting out of their newsletter.

The best that I came across were when there was a clearly defined opt-out button in the footer of the email which, on clicking, opened a new window with a “confirm your choice to unsubscribe” to push. On clicking, the page was automatically closed. Wham-bam thank you mam.

The bad types were the systems which required me to enter in my email address that I wished to unsubscribe from. Seriously, I just came from my email window, surely you could have sent that information over as a parameter. This system, however, is dreamy when compared with several or so websites which required me to login to their site, using a long since forgotten username and password system, then eventually navigating to the correct “my profile” settings. Pretty shoddy. At least it wasn’t as bad as the newsletters which require you email the newsletter with only “unsubscribe” in the subject line.

The worst offender however was a certain train booking service which required me to login with a username (not an email address), navigate 3 menus deep, un-tick 3 individual boxes (don’t sign me up to: 3rd party, offers…etc…) and then click submit. After clicking submit, excited in the knowledge that I no longer would receive timely rail maintainence updates, I was surprised when I recieved yet another email from said website telling me that I had unsubscribed and no longer would receive any emails. Gah.

I have a feeling that in a few days I may recieve another email from them reminding me that I’m continually unsubscribed, oh and btw check out these new offers!

So please, I know newsletter creation is a ball-ache but please, just one “confirm” button to save sanity and inbox capacity for all.