The Spam Button Hurts Small Business

Did you know that the "mark as spam" button in your inbox is really powerful? As much as people think it's a handy way to clean up their inbox, it's a lot more than that, and using it the wrong way can hurt businesses.

The true definition of spam is an unsolicited email, often sent out in bulk, that someone never signed up for, and I think we've all gotten more than our fair share of those. 

It's one of the reasons my small business and most of the other business owners I know are really diligent about NOT sending spam emails and only send emails to people who sign up to our mailing lists. Cause we don't like getting spam either, and we like to treat other's inboxes the way we want ours to be treated.

But the trouble starts when people want to stop receiving our emails. Which by the way, is totally normal and not something businesses get upset about. But we would appreciate it so much if you chose to opt out by clicking the "Unsubscribe" button rather than the "Spam/Junk" button.

So what's the difference?

The unsubscribe button basically just tells the sender to stop emailing you. In our case, our email system will automatically stop sending you our promotional emails right then and there. There's no harm done on our end, and you stop getting emails from us. Mission accomplished!

The spam/junk button however? That's a whole different story. When you click one of those, it's basically alerting the email police to tell them that company has shady email practices and are sending unsolicited emails. And if enough people report an email as spam, the sender will eventually be blacklisted and their emails will start skipping everyone's inboxes and go straight to the spam folder. 

If ever you do receive true spam, that is, unsolicited email you never actually signed up for, by all means, click that spam/junk button. 

But if you're just trying to clean out your inbox and you know that you've signed up for those emails at some point, we'd appreciate it so much if you opted for that Unsubscribe button instead. It will get your inbox cleaned up and while making sure you don't unnecessarily damage that business' email sending reputation with email service providers around the world. 

If you've ever used the spam/junk button where unsubscribing would have been the way to go, we totally get it. Those buttons don't exactly come with detailed instructions, but I hope this helps shed a little light on what happens when you click them.