I get on average about 125 emails a day. Sometimes more, rarely less. About 95 percent of them, I either don’t need or want. They are a testimony to the axiom that no good deed goes unpunished. I am a strong believer in the Jewish commandment of tikun olam, repairing the world. Judaism was the first faith that codified philanthropy, commanding that 10% be given to the concept of repairing the world. Neither the Torah nor the Talmud specifies whether that 10% is net or gross… but it’s the idea that’s important. My wife and I set aside a small pot of money each year that we use to support organizations that speak to what is important to us. As Willy S., the Bard, wrote, “there lies the rub.”
Once you support an organization, no matter how little or how infrequently, you’ve made a friend for life. The solicitations begin. I support about two dozen groups that have turned the receipt of emails into a tsunami. And it turns out that you’ve made more than a friend for life. You’ve made many. Contribution lists are shared and sold. One gift to a group that supports the health of the oceans eventually brings you solicitations from multiple organizations that, in some way, touch on the ocean and everything in it. Your singular has become a plural.
With politicians, it is worse. Let’s say you send a check to Alfred E. Newman for his race for state legislature. In time, you will begin receiving the following: financial cycle requests from him (they always say that the campaign is behind in its goal), requests from people who work on behalf of Al, requests from Al’s party, and requests from other politicians testifying to the wonders and benefits of a Newman election. The icing on the cake is the emails from Alfred himself, telling you he thinks the election of Suzy Q, running for county commissioner in a state about 2,000 miles from where Alfred lives, could change the face of American politics forever. Bolstering Al’s certainty is the certainty expressed in emails from former pols, elected or appointed, who assure you that Suzy’s loss could unravel that already fraying fabric of American democracy. Giving is no longer repairing the world. It is saving it, or so they seem to say.
Another trap is the tantalizing contest with free days somewhere, with or without airfare. Aside from the fact that these are come-ons for condo or time share pitches, if you read the fine print, you’ll see that your entry allows a slew of contributing organizations to contact you. More electronic clutter.
Enter the delete button. I estimate that I spend almost two hours a week deleting emails. It takes that long because I can’t delete them as fast as they show up. There’s a little being inside the computer who is waiting for you. As soon as you sit down to face your emails, that being is ready to pounce. As soon as you strike the first key, the emails you were looking at slide down the screen, pushed there by the bucket of new ones that this troll was holding in a basket while waiting for your arrival. I can delete my brains out and still find I’m living by another famous aphorism: “The hurrier I go, the behinder I get.” Enter the subscribe button.
I was bemoaning my fate to one of my sons. His solution? Unsubscribe from the ones you don’t want. Brilliant! But the email gremlins are as brilliant than this mere mortal, if not more so. Here’s the deal. Let’s start with the law, the Can-Spam Act. The CAN-SPAM Act was passed by Congress on November 22, 2003, and signed into law by President George W. Bush on December 16, 2003. The federal law officially went into effect on January 1, 2004.
Yes, by law, unsolicited commercial emails (such as marketing newsletters or advertisements) must provide a clear and easy way for recipients to opt out of receiving future messages. Requirements vary slightly by region, but the rules generally state that senders must honor the unsubscribe requests within 10 business days and cannot charge a fee or require the user to log in or provide more information than an email address. Really? Not! Many unsubscription attempts end with receipt of a notice that says it may take up to two weeks before you are unsubscribed. Do the math. Some quickly tell you that you are unsubscribed, and not so quickly, it dawns on you that they lied.
Did you know that there is a law that requires media outlets to play commercials at the same sound level as the program? No? Well, there is, and almost none do. We find something similar in a hunt for the unsubscribe button, a hunt that itself could be a reality TV show. Here are some examples:
- Almost all unsubscribe buttons are at the bottom of the missive, the very bottom so you have to at least digest, if not completely read the content before you attempt to rid yourself of it.
- some are almost at the very bottom, so you scroll past them thinking you’re not there yet.
- most are in print that it takes 20-20 vision to read, some are even smaller. I keep a magnifying glass by my keyboard.
- For some, the tiny letters are in bold, in others they are not, and for some reason they don’t get bolded until you click on them.
- In some emails, part of the unsubscribe letters are covered by other wording, and one has to be a dead-eye shot to hit the remaining letters.
- One that makes me angriest is the site that makes you sign up as a member before you can unsubscribe as a member.
- Here’s my favorite. Having done this so many times, one is trained to go directly to the bottom of the email. You squint and scour the type and find nothing. What you will find, if you think about it, is that you’ve now had two passes through the content of the email you didn’t want. Eventually, you realize it might be elsewhere,–it’s the law, right?– and it is. It is at the very top, where you never thought to look.
And let us not forget the ones that ask you for the reason you are leaving them go. You don’t really think that your reason matters, do you? It is only a ploy to find a better marketing strategy that will net them more subscribers.
This friends, is hard work and it gets harder because squint and scour as you might, you just can’t find the magic word. You know why? Because it’s not there. Enter the words “transactional emails” and “cold outreach,” also known in real speak as exemptions. “Cold sales” emails are those sent from one professional to another. They do not always require a clickable link, but the sender must provide instructions on how to opt-out (e.g., “Reply with ‘No’ to be removed”) and must immediately honor requests to stop. A word about that “reply with ‘no’.” Very often, there is a resubscribe button above, below, or to the side of it. Tired eyes and gimpy joints will often hit the wrong button. You’ve now resubscribed and have to start all over again.
Transactional emails facilitate a pre-existing transaction (such as a receipt, invoice, or shipping update) generally do not require an unsubscribe option. This seems to make sense. Wait, not so quick. What about all those fake bills and receipts that are phishing for you to get sucked into a scam? They are transactional in content and therefore exempt.
Major email providers like Gmail and Yahoo require senders of bulk email to include a one-click unsubscribe link directly in the email header, making it easier for users to opt out. Ask yourself this, “Who do you think is policing the billions of emails to see if the senders are following the rules?” My guess? Not enough people, or logarithms, or whatevers.
And let’s close with a surprise that I doubt will surprise you. The EU and Canada require senders to secure consent and provide an easily assessable mechanism in marketing messages. Easy peasy. Only Uncle Sam is hanging us out to dry.
Last week, I spent a block of hours on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday unsubscribing. While I do notice the absence of some emails, I’ve noticed something else. I seem to get a raft full of new ones to fill the gap. There seem to be more senders of emails than Elon Musk has dollars—probably more. I won’t give up, but I fear, as we used to say in Brooklyn, that they’ve got us comin’ and goin’.
Columnist and author Bill Gralnick was born and raised in Brooklyn, NY. He recently finished a humorous memoir trilogy. The first book is “The War of the Itchy Balls and Other Tales from Brooklyn.” The second is “George Washington Didn’t Sleep Here.” The recently published third is, That’s Why They Call It Work.” He is currently working on a novel. His books are available on Amazon and his other writings at https://www.williamgralnickauthor.com.
