After identifying how a person requesting an unsubscribe that is absent from your email marketing list is receiving your email marketing messages, what should you do about it?  Typically a digital marketer will simply unsubscribe the uncovered email address and consider the matter settled. But savvier digital marketers can leverage the opportunity to minimize loss and potentially re-engage a subscriber.

Email Forwarding

If the email was forwarded from a subscriber’s old address, you should unsubscribe both the old and the new address from your email marketing list.  This will ensure that the unsubscribe request is honored for all of the individual’s email addresses and won’t result in any SPAM complaints from the unsubscriber in the future.

Former Email Address

If the message was redistributed from an old address at an organization to a new one, check your list to see if a subscriber from the same URL can provide a more suitable contact.  Sometimes, an email address is set to forward to the wrong or unsuitable person. In other cases, an email address was intended to be temporarily forwarded to a co-workers email until a replacement for the old employee was hired but never gets redirected to replacement hire.  In either of these cases, it’s possible to update your list with a new subscriber that is likely to be engaged with your content by inquiring if there is a more suitable contact.

Group Mailbox

Group mailboxes are the biggest risk of missing an opportunity because unsubscribing that address might remove an entire organization from your communications. If most of the group wants to receive your emails, it’s a disservice to remove them all.  At minimum, you can send a final email to the group email box alerting the group that the email address has been unsubscribed and provide a link to your subscription form for those that want to opt-in to continue receiving your email communications.

Once you track down how someone apparently not on your email marketing list that wants to subscribe is receiving your communications, it’s paramount to honor the unsubscribe.  But that doesn’t mean you have to cut your losses.  Analyze the situation to see if similar contacts or group recipients would like to freshly opt in to your email communications.

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It’s important to be diligent about unsubscribe requests, not only to respect the recipients wishes but also to keep your communications targeted to an engaged audience. In fact, it’s a legal obligation to include a method for unsubscribing in all of your email marketing.  However, it’s common for subscribers to overlook your unsubscribe instructions and simply send an email requesting removal from your list.  But what if the email address for the person asking to be unsubscribed isn’t in your list to begin with?

The root cause of this problem is almost always an issue of an email address or system forwarding communications to other email addresses.  For instance:

• Email Forwarding – As people move to new companies or create new email addresses, they often set up automatic forwarding to a new email address. The old address is the one on your email list and is what’s actually redirected to the new email address that you have no record of.
• Former Email Address – Some companies will redirect a former employee’s email to a colleague. Technically it’s the same thing as an email forward but can be more difficult to diagnose since it’s a different person that requested an email vs. the person requesting the unsubscribe.
• Group Mailbox – Some organizations will subscribe a group or shared email address that distributes an email to multiple people. In this case, one person subscribed but other recipients might be unaware of it.  So the group mailbox is the record in your email marketing list.

Investigating the unsubscribe request in a logical manner will expedite the process while inconveniencing the requester as little as possible.

1. Use the Unsubscribe Method that the User didn’t

An email request from a user to unsubscribe is often a reply or forward to your marketing email.  In this case, the customized link or instructions for the user are still active.  Click the link and complete the unsubscribe process for the user.

2. Search for Similar Data

Do a search in your email list for the person’s name. If you have that on record it can be used to unsubscribe the old email address that is forwarding to the new one.  You can also try searching by company or similar URL in an email.  This can often hint at a former or group mailbox that might be redirecting to the person that made an unsubscribe request.

3. Respond to the Unsubscribe Request

If you struggle to make any connection between the email address that wanted to unsubscribe and your list, try replying to the person.  It’s better to let them know that the email is likely forwarding from an old or shared account and then the two of you might be able to identify how the email is being delivered.  Even if you can’t identify how the recipient is receiving the email, the recipient should be able to forward you the email that they received so that you can use the unsubscribe link.

With some logical steps, digital marketers can often uncover the delivery method to an email address not on the email marketing list and fulfill our obligation of honoring an unsubscribe request.