I’m focusing my comments around the footer – if you’d like to talk more about the email as a whole, I’m happy to do that as well.

I like the unsubscribe process… click the unsubscribe link and you get a simple page asking you to confirm that you want to unsubscribe (showing the email address clearly, too).

The “Member Benefits” link took me to a page asking me to login. There are some member benefits and a register link on the right side of the page, but my eyes gravitated toward the left for some reason. I think that link should go directly to the registration form (right now there’s an extra click involved).

I notice you have both a “Contact Us” link and your service@ email address directly in the footer. It’s a bit redundant, but I actually like it. People looking for an email address will find that, people looking for a “Contact Us” link (or a phone number) should be able to find their way to your contact page easily.

I didn’t care as much for the redundancy of the “Terms of Offer” link and the paragraph beneath it. Are there legal reasons for you having both there? If not, I’d consider moving the terms paragraph to the website and just having the link.

What happens when someone replies to this email? Where does that reply go? To your service@ address? To the one listed along the top of the email? (If so, is that address monitored?) You’ll want to make sure that people asking questions or requesting to unsubscribe via reply are accommodated.

Your privacy page is dated “as of June 6, 2005.” Might want to update that.

The FTF link is really close to the “Security & Privacy” link, and to the image linked to the offer. I’d spread those out a bit further.

What are your subscriber demographics like? You’re using 8 to 9 point font in this email. If your subscriber base skews older, a larger font size might be a good idea.

Hope this helps – thanks for putting your email out there for feedback!

The unsubscribe link took me to a page that said something like this:

"Um… you just tried to unsubscribe, but you can’t because you aren’t logged in. You need to log in first then."

I see.

As a result of this condescension, Thrilllist will now receive a [Report Spam] from me, every single morning.

gmail is pretty good, and I expect it to sort Thrilllist into spam box, automatically, within about a week.

Justin, thanks for putting this post back out for comments!

Including subscriber-specific details like that can certainly help to jog people’s memory.

Re: SpamAssassin – don’t let it control your content too much. As long as your total message score is below 5, you should be just fine. A score of 0.4 doesn’t denote a serious content problem.

I just ran that through the SpamAssassin and it gave me a 0.4 spam rating! The reason:

"Body contains a lame excuse as to why spam was sent"

LOL!

It highlighted the phrase "You are receiving this email because"

So…

I removed that entire paragraph and got a zero rating.

My little message now reads:

==================================
———- *** Friendly Reminder *** ———
==================================

Thank you for being a valued member of the
[name of your site/business] mailing list!

Date you subscribed: {!signdate long}
…
…
…

etcetera

As you can see, I also altered the date variable to the long version to avoid any confusion with dates like 1/6/2008 — Is that the 6th of January or the 1st of June? Depends where you’re from, dunnit.

I also removed the line-break on each piece of data.

And finally, I’m not crazy about the "Friendly Reminder" title, which I just whacked in without thinking too hard about it.

Now that I have had time to consider it, it doesn’t QUITE sit right with me. It kind of has that "looking-over-the-bifocals", pursed-lips, school ma’am tone about it that I’m not a big fan off, y’know…

Any ideas?

And some EXCELLENT comments, to boot.

I took David’s sample from above (THANK YOU for sharing that with us!), adjusted it slightly and saved it in a text document on my desktop so I can easily cut and paste it into each new autoresponder message as I go.

Here’s my slightly modified version:

=============================
———- *** Friendly Reminder *** ———
=============================

Thank you for being a valued member of the
Absolutely Essential Guitar mailing list!

You are receiving this email because you
signed up for and confirmed your request
for information. Your details are as follows:

Date you subscribed:
{!signdate ss}

Name submitted:
{!name_fix}

Email Address submitted:
{!email}

Your IP address at that time:
{!add_ip}

============================
This email is ONLY sent to people who have
requested info and confirmed that request.
Seriously, I hate spam as much as you do!
============================

I could, of course, make it more generic and put it in my sig, but I thought it important to include the name of the actual website the person signed up from to serve as a very clear reminder to them.

If, however, I ran just one website, I would do both. That is, put the name of my business in the "template" above and then include it in the sig.

Anyway, thanks again to David. And, indeed, to Aweber for posting these articles in the first place, and to all the folks who take the time to share their advice.

Nice one!

I sent in a ticket.