I finally got annoyed today at the number of “noisy” emails I was getting from Overstock.com so I decided to unsubscribe. Never mind that I was already annoyed with Overstock.com because of the frequency of sending, low content quality, and difficulty in unsubscribing. That’s a story for another time but it will suffice to say that the company’s brand now conjures up negative feelings in my mind.

I finally found the unsubscribe link (hidden among some other links) and I clicked it. The first mistake Overstock.com made was that the process was not a one-click process. After I had already clicked on the (well-hidden) unsubscribe link, I was taken to a confirmation page which required me to click again.

The worst part, however, is that when I finally confirmed my desire to leave this mailing list, I received this confirmation message:

“We have received your email frequency change or unsubscribe request for the email address listed below. Please note that it may take up to 10 days for your change to take effect.”

Seriously? It takes 10 days to remove me from a mailing list? There is absolutely no excuse for this. The technology has existed for over a decade which allows unsubscribe requests to be processed automatically. A delay of this nature implies that human intervention is required to update the database which means that not only will I continue to be annoyed by emails, but Overstock.com has to pay someone to click buttons.

Be sure your email newsletter offers an automatic one-click unsubscribe process. Anything else is wasteful and irresponsible.