Rubenerd

Stepping, email footers… someone could have made that funny.

I’ve mentioned Merlin Mann’s bulk email trick a few times before, but there’s someone born every minute who hasn’t seen The Flintstones. Keep a smart folder or saved search in your email client that matches on the word unsubscribe, and it makes it a snap to perform regular purges.

Either I’ve become very good at this and fewer of those emails now arrive in my inbox, or marketers are cottoning onto the fact we’re doing this. I’m seeing more footers going to great lengths to reference anything but the specific word unsubscribe. Here are a few examples just from today:

• Change communication preferences
• Update your email preferences
• Update your preference here
• Update your subscription preferences

In fact, is a phrase with two words. The trend now seems to be some babble proceeded by prefererences. Maybe some regex is required.