Total Pageviews

Thursday, July 20, 2017

Battle of the Buttons

I get a lot of emails every day, while some days generate more than others. Some companies send out a bunch on a daily basis. They have instructive newsletters and send out several different ones, new products, frequent sales. If something doesn't catch my interest, it either gets sent to the circular file or I might leave it for further perusal when I have more time. Sometimes the spam gets through (although once in a great while a spam email proves to be useful.) Sometimes something I've been expecting gets sent to the spam folder. Apparently, the system can't always tell the difference. No problem -- most of the time.

Then there are the emails that, for whatever reason, no longer interest you. Maybe the information they were offering turned out to not be what you were looking for. Or maybe they're an affiliate of someone from whom you get regular email. That's the equivalent of snail-mail companies selling their mailing lists.

Owners of email lists have certain rules they're required to follow. And as far as I know they follow them diligently. About the most important, as far as I'm concerned, is the ability to unsubscribe. They may have the button present, but it seems there's nothing in the rules that says the button has to work. Guess what? Eight out of ten don't work. I haven't the foggiest idea what the reasoning behind that action could be. I've tried sending email to them. Sometimes that works, other times, not so much. So the battle begins.

I might often go back and try again, but when the cursor passes over a link and nothing changes, it's a good bet the link is dead. If it worked, it should change from blue to purple. If anything, it's more likely to fade a bit. That's not going to stop me since I have my own weapon.

 It's called a delete button.

Every day I go through my email list a couple times to keep it from getting out of hand. A list of a hundred emails, for various reasons, may end up being whittled down to ten. It's worse when my laptop decides to take a mini-vacation. I've had as many as four hundred emails waiting for three days, and I'll end up keeping, maybe twenty-five to read. The delete button gets quite a workout. There's a line in one of the Marvel Comic movies where Captain America says, "I can do this all day."  Same goes for using delete button.

Sooner or later the emails I can't unsubscribe from will have to disappear. The owners will have to purge their lists of non-active clients/customers/followers or the list will get too big to handle. Until that happens, it's just a matter of which is more determined: a non-functioning unsubscribe button or a working delete with a happy 'trigger finger.' .

No comments: