Moving Onto a Cleaner Inbox

Jakob Neilson’s piece on newsletter usability inspired me to unsubscribe from MoveOn.org

I signed up for MoveOn’s electronic newsletter for dubious reasons. The organization’s PAC was holding a Vote for Change Tour where REM, one of my most favorite bands, was set to perform. Tickets were going to be hard to come by. As I recall, you had to sign up for the MoveOn newsletter and based on a lottery system, you would be e-mailed a code to buy tickets.

So I joined MoveOn and bought my tickets. (In an aside, my best friend ended up coming to town on business that day, so I sold the tickets for what they cost me on Craig’s List – scalping is bad karma – and never got to see the show.)

Since that time, I’ve gotten all sorts of e-mails from MoveOn. I’m not even sure what most of them are for, since I stopped opening them. And I felt guilty about canceling my membership since it's an organization that’s trying to do good, even while flooding my inbox.

Today I cancelled my newsletter subscription. I get the impression I’m not the only one who feels this way. When canceling, MoveOn presented me with several reasons why I abandoned ship:

Receiving too many emails from MoveOn
Too busy to read emails
Was only interested in election-related efforts
No longer interested in efforts covered by the emails
Intended to sign a petition, but not to receive emails
Already receiving MoveOn mail at a different address

I think MoveOn understands the faults of its newsletters. But at least it’s easy to unsubscribe.