Last Friday, I logged into MailerLite to fiddle around with something and noticed that after Thursday's newsletter, twelve people had unsubscribed.
I've been sending this newsletter consistently for years, and without fail one or two people unsubscribe each time I send a message. Twelve seemed like ... a lot.
My first thought: how bad was my last newsletter?? I had a look and decided that while maybe it wasn't an absolute masterpiece, it didn't seem like something likely to send people running for the hills. (Here it is, in case you want to judge for yourself.)
Next step: I decided to have a look at the actual unsubscribes. (Usually I don't do this!)
It turns out, 10 of the 12 were from various university email addresses. According to MailerLite, all 10 of these people had clicked on every link in my message, including the unsubscribe link, within one second of it arriving in their inboxes.
Clearly, there's some kind of new safety bot screening situation that some universities implemented last week that's clicking all links automatically, including unsubscribe links. I'm pretty sure none of these 10 people have any idea they unsubscribed.
Fun times.
So, the next things I got to do were:
a) Decide whether to reach out to these people and awkwardly ask if they meant to unsubscribe and explain what I think happened. Decided to do this later this week when I have a second.
b) Try to figure out if there's a way to prevent this from happening again, if more email systems decide to implement something similar. Turns out that yes, there is a way to turn on 2-step unsubscribe in MailerLite rather than 1-click unsubscribe. That's what I'll do temporarily, until I can fully sort through things.
In case you're wondering why I'm sharing this riveting story of administrative woe, there are two reasons. First, to give you a head's up about the university email situation. Maybe it will affect you, too?
Second, because this is exactly the kind of thing that sucks up time and brain space when you were expecting to have a nice, productive day doing other things. I'm commiserating in case you've run into something similar lately. I'm almost sure you have, because running a small business brings this kind of situation more often than seems entirely reasonable.
If it's not one thing, it's another.
Anyway. Solidarity if you're also having this kind of week. I'm glad you're in practice, and I bet your clients are, too.
Take care,
Camille
