Some people don’t trust unsubscribe links, even from legitimate email senders.

Others don’t want to be bothered locating the unsubscribe link in your email.

In both cases, recipients may click the “spam” button in order to unsubscribe – raising your spam complaint rates and possibly reducing deliverability.

Wouldn’t it be nice if ISPs made unsubscribing easier and more trustworthy for users (at the same time reducing your complaint rate)?

One major ISP is already doing so.

List-Unsubscribe Header Allows ISPs to Add an Unsubscribe Button or Link

By adding a “list-unsubscribe” header to your outgoing email marketing campaigns, you enable ISPs to add an unsubscribe link or button into their user interface.

That way, readers who want to unsubscribe, but who don’t want to be bothered with locating the unsubscribe link in your email, can do so without clicking the “Spam” button in their email clients.

How Hotmail Uses the List-Unsubscribe Header

Windows Live Hotmail (for simplicity’s sake, I’m shortening it to “Hotmail”) is the first major ISP to implement support for the List-Unsubscribe header.

Here’s what happens.

When a Hotmail subscriber first gets a message from you (like this welcome message from our Test Drive), since s/he hasn’t added you to the Safe Senders list yet, images and links are disabled.

The top of your email looks like this in Hotmail:

(Click the image above to see what the full email looks like.)

When someone clicks the “mark as safe” link, images are turned on and the top of the email changes to include an unsubscribe link:

If someone clicks the unsubscribe link, they see an alert box:

When they click “OK” they’re taken to the unsubscribe page:

What Do I Need To Do To Use The List-Unsubscribe Header In My Emails?

If you’re an AWeber user, nothing at all – we automatically add this header to your campaigns.

We’ll keep you updated on any other major ISPs adopting the list-unsubscribe header (if you haven’t already done so, follow this blog by email or RSS and be the first to know!).

Stumbled across this yesterday: Google Blog: It’s Not About The Spam.

The video they included with their post gives a basic — and amusing — overview of what they do to filter out UBE while delivering wanted email to the inbox. (Bonus: the lab costumes add a nice Halloween touch!)

Check out the video.

“Awesome!”

Not especially eloquent, but the first word that leapt from my mouth when I read about Yahoo! blocking PayPal & eBay phishers using DomainKeys.

Just the other day we blogged about phishing and a great game from CMU that teaches people how to recognize phishing sites.

Now. according to Yahoo’s Yodel Anecdotal blog, whenever you get an email that looks like it’s coming from eBay or PayPal:

…but there’s more to good email deliverability than permission alone.

Much goes into getting email delivered, and fortunately your email service provider (such as *ahem* AWeber ) takes care of a lot.

However, you hold some of the keys to good deliverability in your hands, too. But if you don’t use them, you’ll have to confront declining delivery and response rates.

Microsoft has begun Sender ID look ups, displaying a large yellow alert box called a “safety bar” above messages that are not authenticated. Sender ID is the Microsoft implementation of the popular SPF authentication system which indicates which IP addresses a specific Sender or Return Path is permitted to send from. The safety bar will [...]