If you interface with Gmail through a browser, Google just flipped the switch on a slick new feature — so slick, in fact, that it’ll make you wonder why it’s not ubiquitous in email-dom.
When a promotional email graces your inbox — if you have a few sitting in your Trash folder, you can follow along — train your eyes on the email header, just to the right of the sender’s designation. You’re looking for the word “Unsubscribe.” If you can find an email that looks like this, that word’s just what it sounds like: an easy-peasy, one-click link that fires off an automated email to the sender requesting they remove you from further sendings. No fuss, no muss.
The idea is to make it simpler to remove yourself from unwanted promotional lists, to be able to opt out without having to sort through the fine print at an email’s footer or wallow through some company’s proprietary (and on occasion prohibitive) removal mechanics. The feature’s been around for some time in Gmail, but only for a minority of users. Google just turned it on for everyone.
Mind you, it’s not a panacea. It’s not clear, for instance, that an automated message from Gmail to a promotional sender is going to do the trick, since it circumvents the sender’s own automated removal process. It’s also not clear how Gmail differentiates between wanted and unwanted emails (or promotional versus non-promotional). The “Unsubscribe” option appeared in some of the promotional emails I flipped through this morning, but not others.
I wondered if it might be a simple text scrape — a process whereby Google’s checking for the word “unsubscribe” (tied to a link) somewhere in the email — but I’ve isolated several instances of promotional emails that contain the word but don’t manifest Google’s new “Unsubscribe” option that sink that theory.
It’s also not designed to combat spam, say someone trying to send you your million dollar prize winnings. Those emails will continue to show up in your Spam folder; as always, your best bet’s to simply zap them (never reply to spam).
In the future, wouldn’t it be nice if this were intrinsic to all forms of communication? I’m talking about a standard opt-out button every marketer has to comply with, that’s as mandatory as the hang-up switch for a voice call, and as omnipresent as the power button on an electronic device.
Update: Baydin CEO Alex Moore dropped me a note explaining how Google’s determining whether to manifest that unsubscribe button in a given email: