Awful title but that’s how it goes sometimes.  I was just reminded that when I unsubscribe and ask to be removed from a mailing list, folks have all sorts of assumptions about what that means and may be misinterpreting subscriber choices more generally.

I personally keep up with information in multiple ways including going to sites [I have a group of sites I check multiple times a day], subscribing to RSS feeds, subscribing to email newsletters [at addresses that may not clearly identify who's receiving them], following links from blogs, following occasional email suggestions, keeping up with press releases and mixing feeds and then following the results [like at World Cypher where I currently track 75 sources with more to come].

That means that I could be following you very closely and you’ll never know unless I write about you or contact you.

But I’ve found more than once that folks have thought when I unsubscribed to their unrequested email that I wasn’t interested when I’ve often been getting news of their updates before their email gets out.

That means that there’s probably a larger number with that view who haven’t told me that’s what they think.

I could go on but the point should be obvious, people don’t really know what’s up with their subscribers, in the broadest sense of the word, and may never really know.  If you base your evaluation on too little info, in this case an email subscriber list, when you don’t have the names of your RSS subscribers and web surfers, then you’re deluding yourself that you have a clue about what’s going on when someone unsubscribes from one source.

On a related note, I’ve started creating filters for newsletters that I don’t want that don’t have an unsubscribe option.  I can glance at it once a week, in multiple accounts, to confirm that there’s little there for me while keeping those size-queen list maintainers happy and collecting their profits.  It’s a rapidly growing list and a reminder of why most email blasts are a waste of your money.