At the Email Insider Summit, I had the opportunity to ask AOL Postmaster Charles Stiles about one of my favorite topics: an opt-out button. The problem is that the “spam” button is used indiscriminately by recipients for both reporting spam and for simply removing themselves from a list. If a second button were added for opting out, it would allow recipients to make that critical distinction, and thus improve the ability of AOL’s spam filters to tell the good email from the bad.
Charles jumped on the question. Apparently, AOL really likes the idea, but can’t implement it as quickly as it would like. He said the AOL email application currently lacks room for another button. He also pointed out that an opt-out button only makes sense for quality senders. (Of course, the ability to know whether a sender is legitimate, and thus whether an opt-out button should be enabled, is already in place with its white-listing and reputation system.) He really likes the idea and indicated it’s something we’ll see in a few years.
“Not enough screen real-estate” has been the number one objection I’ve heard in the past as well. I thought Microsoft took an innovate approach by having their Unsubscribe/Opt-Out button REPLACE the Report Spam button. But as Charles indicates, only for trusted senders. While there are some things I would change about Microsoft’s specific implementation, this seems like a good general approach.
There is more discussion about this at http://www.list-unsubscribe.com/