So my reward for protecting my electronic privacy is to have my privacy violated through the USPS.
You think the USPS is reading your credit card statements?
Leaving people in the dark about this sort of requirement should be considered an anti-pattern.
Unspoken assumptions are always going to be wrong for some people.
When unsubscribing, users are very sensitive to any subsequent emails (just read the other comments in this thread). Sending an email to confirm their unsubscription might annoy a lot of the users, or will make them doubt that you're above board ("legit" newsletters boast about not sending any emails after unsubscribing, so this is a little red flag) - they will then flag that email as spam, and then we're back at square one.
They also get annoyed when you ask them to confirm that they still want to read the emails.
And Gmail will flag you if you keep sending the emails when they're not opening the emails.
I think there really is no good solution here.
Overeagerly classifying legitimate email that someone subscribed to as spam is no better than classifying spam as legitimate. Especially on a system like GMail where one person's incorrect classification would lead to other people not receiving their subscriptions in their normal mailbox.
But that is not how it currently works.
Is there a reliable way to tell if an account is forwarding to Gmail? That way, you could reserve your spammer tools (not judging you for using them) for gmail users, and treat the rest of your subscribers with the respect you clearly intended.
The reason "You haven't loaded images for n months" is used as a signal is that there's a cost in sending unwanted email to people, and there's often no other way to know if you're wanted or not.
I clearly expressed interest in your newsletter by confirming the double opt-in.
It's also ok if I open your newsletter only once in a while, I may be busy, or I only want to read your content when its title click something in me.
The most successful newsletters respect this and did so for so many years. They never messed up with my subscription. I will never mark them as spam because I trust them. And there is a clear unsubscribe link in every one of them that I can click if I change my mind.
This is nothing new, Permission Marketing from Seth Godin is what, more than 20 years old now?
Instead, automation looks always fun and clever, until your growth-hack goes wrong.
Newer newsletters don't have that reputation, so they are more heavily penalized for low open rate or higher spam flag rate. Thus, they need to react more quickly to users invisible actions or risk damaging their reputation. I don't think this is a growth hack, I think this is a necessary action as a new entrant in a very unforgiving space - see some stories upthread from legitimate newsletters.
While your actions are invisible to the sender, they are _not_ invisible to your email provider, and ultimately they are the ones who make reputation decisions that can destroy a newsletter.
"We found we can increase the number of people subbing for the newsletter by skipping double opt in"
"Why are we getting so many spam flags?"
Because the increase you gained was all the people who didn't want it, cosmic brain. The people who wanted it already had it.
They may well consider this email to be an annoyance, but I think that's better than making an assumption, taking an action and leaving users in the dark. Some will prefer that, but some will be confused about why your service isn't working for them.
Seems like nothing of value would be lost?
> They don't actually care if you read or enjoy their content, you are either one of the users who increase their opening and click rates, or you're a useless burden to them.
Confirms that indeed nothing of value would be lost. It seems like a win-win situation, spam-letters you wouldn't want to read anyway eventually remove you off their spam list because they can't stalk you.
That would depend on the newsletter. Some newsletter provide lots of value for those wanting to keep up to date with minimum effort.
It could also be a newsletter you need to monitor for work purposes.
> They don't actually care if you read or enjoy their content, you are either one of the users who increase their opening and click rates, or you're a useless burden to them.
No they care more that you don't reduce their deliverability rate and that is affected by email service providers deciding if you're not opening the email you're not interested, not reading and enjoying the content and therefore and don't want the content.
A lot of value could be lost. There are one or two newsletters I get by email which I read frequently and may contain extremely valuable information (i.e. could result in a significant sale). It could easily be a pretty significant loss to the company (and me) if they stopped sending them.
Although I will give you that the vast majority of auto-removals have been beneficial for me.
Or you get one of those mail saying "We are removing you from the list because you don't read our newsletter", often without offering any other confirmation signal. Basically they says "Let us track you or you are out of this list".
And this is also the result of marketing people who look at ways to increase the "good numbers", more likely to show to their bosses. They don't actually care if you read or enjoy their content, you are either one of the users who increase their opening and click rates, or you're a useless burden to them.