{"id":10817,"date":"2026-02-24T18:39:27","date_gmt":"2026-02-25T00:39:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/attentionmedia.io\/?p=10817"},"modified":"2026-02-24T18:39:27","modified_gmt":"2026-02-25T00:39:27","slug":"we-need-more-humanity-in-email-especially-at-unsubscribe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/attentionmedia.io\/?p=10817","title":{"rendered":"We need more humanity in email, especially at unsubscribe"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Are empathy, sympathy and humanity bad now? That\u2019s what I hear from some thought leaders and government officials who say we can\u2019t afford to be so soft anymore. I couldn\u2019t disagree more, and I urge my fellow marketers not to abandon these values.<\/p>\n

The COVID-19 pandemic showed us how important they are. With the turmoil we\u2019re experiencing every day, I believe it\u2019s more important than ever to exercise these human traits.<\/p>\n

When you ignore them, you also take away one of email\u2019s superpowers: building one-to-one connections in that most personal of spaces \u2014 the email inbox. We must show our customers we know them and understand their needs and aspirations.<\/p>\n

The most obvious point of connection comes in the email message itself, but that\u2019s not the only place we can show our customers some care and consideration.<\/p>\n

This article will be a little different from my usual, and I hope you\u2019ll play along. I usually come to you with fully formed advice or commentary on the email issues we marketers face. Today, I\u2019m workshopping an idea that came to me as I traced the digital trails my father and uncle left behind after they passed away within weeks of each other last summer.<\/p>\n

What mass unsubscribing taught me<\/h2>\n

As part of my duties as an executor for both estates, I had to clean out their email inboxes to make sorting through the clutter easier. I could have done what most civilians do \u2014 mass-delete all messages and shut down the accounts.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t do that because I needed to find and process bills and either close or switch over accounts, so I combed through each inbox and unsubscribed from every email list I could find.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

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During that process, I encountered dozens of unsubscribe flows. Some worked. A surprising number didn\u2019t, especially those for big-name brands. I encountered way too many 404 pages. By the end of my work, I could understand why some frustrated subscribers don\u2019t even bother unsubscribing.<\/p>\n

(<\/em>Note: <\/em><\/strong>Before you read any further, test your own unsubscribe process to make sure it works. It\u2019s the law, and you owe it to your subscribers and to the integrity and safety of your email program to be sure this essential automation is working as it should.)<\/em><\/p>\n

I also learned that most brands don\u2019t seem to care why I was unsubscribing. It was just me clicking the unsubscribe button, maybe confirming the request on the website and then, boom. I was gone.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s such a waste. We can learn a lot from our unsubscribers. These are the people who care enough to opt out rather than hit the \u201creport spam\u201d button. They don\u2019t let emails pile up and then delete them without reading.<\/p>\n

We are ignoring critical information. What broke the relationship?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Some companies gave me the standard checklist of unsubscribe reasons (none included a \u201cdeath\u201d version). If a brand offered an open-ended \u201cOther\u201d option, I tested it by writing \u201cThis person is deceased\u201d or \u201cThe subscriber passed away.\u201d<\/p>\n

To date, no brands have responded to those messages. Maybe nobody\u2019s monitoring that box, or they don\u2019t register that someone unsubscribed for that reason.<\/p>\n

That leads me to this question: Should we do more to recognize when someone closes an account or unsubscribes because the account holder has died?<\/p>\n

Looking for your comments and questions<\/h2>\n

I haven\u2019t concluded anything yet. That\u2019s why I\u2019m throwing the following questions out to you in the broader email world:<\/p>\n