The Woes of the Email Marketer

New spam laws are in the works, including one that aims to change email from an opt-out system to an opt-in system. Not that it will make much difference since most of the worst spam is sent via compromised PCs or originates outside the country. Among marketer's biggest woes are people who want to unsubscribe from a legitimate newsletter and do so by using the spam button rather than the unsubscribe link. This results in the marketer getting a bad reputation if the spam button reports back to the ISP. But people are taught to use the spam button rather than the unsubscribe link because for true spam, the unsubscribe link often only validates your email address as active and leads to more spam. In my own experience, unsubscribing from legitimate marketing emails doesn't work much of the time anyway, so it's easier to just filter them to the trash. And even companies I don't mind hearing from, get carried away, thus forcing me to unsubscribe.