Something interesting popped up on one of the online politics discussion groups today — once you’re on Rudy Giuliani’s supporter email list, you can check out any time you like, but it looks as though you can never leave. Giuliani messages do have an unsubscribe link at the bottom, but it just bounces you to the campaign site main page rather than actually removing you from the email list. Michael Whitney has looked at this “feature” of Giuliani messages from the point of view of the CAN-SPAM Act, and it since the emails are political rather than commercial, the Giuliani campaign doesn’t appear to be violating the law. Still, it’s bad list-management practice to make it difficult for people to unsubscribe, since you risk taking someone who’s merely tired of hearing from you and making them downright hostile — a potential anti-evangelist for your cause.
Of course, this is likely just an oversight in the email template design rather than some nefarious plot. But at the moment, which way to the egress? For Giuliani supporters, there is none.
– cpd
Just because you’re bounced to the campaign homepage that doesn’t necessarily mean you weren’t unsubscribed. It could have just processed the request and redirected you to the homepage.
The unsub link in the email is a personalized URL hosted by Lyris, Giuliani’s email vendor. I have seen links like this automatically process the unsubscribe without having to re-enter the information.
I was on the campaign until May, though I don’t know if this is how they have it set up or not. But I definitely have seen a process similar what I described — in which case it makes it easier on the user to actually unsubscribe though the lack of a confirmation message can be confusing.
Good point Patrick. But in this case, the person trying to unsubscribe kept getting the messages despite clicking on the unsub button every time they arrived. So, clearly something wasn’t working.
rudy comes from new york land of the melting pot. well i think he is a pig. i am married to a mexican we have children and rudy wants to send them{mexicans} all home. what about our children? does he not care he would be ripping ther hearts out, they are american -mexican. but i guess that dont matter to him cause he left his wife for his mistress, so i guess family aint crap to him. well my family is my life and my husband loves his kids, loves america. dont family have meaning anymore? rudy needs to think with his head not the one in his pants as you see family aint nothing to him to have a mistress and tax payer were paying the bill for security for him to have a mistress now thats his way of thinking about america, maybe he needs to rethink his way of hinking