Mistakenly believing it will keep list attrition minimal, many people love to make unsubscribing difficult. It amazes me that people still think this is a reasonable way to treat end users.

Do you want your brand to be perceived as not looking after your customers? If I’m a subscriber to your content who wants out, and it takes me 3 clicks to do it, I’m likely to do two things: start referring to your site as being shady, and report you as a spammer.

Make it EASY for users to unsubscribe, not hard. Putting up roadblocks to unsubscribing may provide the illusion of a large list, but it is deleterious to brand image, member satisfaction and list activity. It’s much better to have a high quality email list with an 80% open rate than a large list with a 10% open rate.