As an email marketer, I can tell you That Many of the people in my profession work hard to Develop good content, sell products and Constantly Their Increase the size of Their subscription base.
Despit Their Best Efforts, There Are Three Things Working Against Them.
You see, MOST email subscribers Are naive, lazy and Misinformed. Of course I Mean That in the nicest way possible 
.
Email Subscribers Are Naive
When Joe consumer buys a burgundy, cashmere crewneck sweater from Bluefly . com and checks the “please send me offers” box, He Thinks He’ll get an occasional message about a sale, or Perhaps a recommendation for a snazzy vest That Would Go just right with His new sweater. He trusts Them. I Gave Them His money and Expects That They Will Be His friend.
Poor unsuspecting Joe. I have never in His wildest dreams imagined he’d Be That getting two messages a day from Them (on top of all the spam email I Already Other gets).
But, who’s at fault? Joe, or the historical abused marketers That Just trust? Like the man said “Can not we all just get along?”. There Has To Be a happy medium somewhere, and it’s up to the marketers to search for it, and it’s up to the “Joes” of the world to let Them know how much is too much. If we work balance Towards That We’ll All Be happier. Consumers Will Have great products to buy and marketers will have a nice bump in Their conversion rates.
Email Subscribers Are Lazy
Despit His keen fashion sense, Joe is lazy. Even if I is one of the Few non-marketers knows All Those That Are required to emails Have a way to unsubscribe , I does not have to waste time looking for a link buried at the bottom, in a Typically Smaller sized font and a Often Color That Makes It Hard to Distinguish from the background.
It’s so much cutting easier for Joe to just click “mark as spam.”
But Is That really Joe’s fault? Or, Are the marketers That Think They Have to make it as Difficult as possible for someone to unsubscribe, while still Following the letter of the law the ones to blame? Many email marketers Have Been Told over and over – “That list grow,” Some it’s events for an annual performance goal That Has To Be Met. Over the Years We Have Our Trained Actually subscribers to use the “easy” button. I’d love to blame Joe, can not. Sorry.
Rather Than judge a list by ITS size, we evaluate-how about how it is Effective. What is your click rate, What is your conversion rate?
If someone decide What you are selling is not for Them, Make It Easy for Them to leave. However – Would not It Be Better To Have Figured Out What They Want From You Before It Got To That point? The only way to do That is more testing, and monitoring What Works and What Does not.
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Posted in Internet Business | 
Tags: Bluefly, Conversion rate, E-mail spam, Email, Email address, Marketing, Spam, Subscription business model
To me it seems, more and more merchants do not even offer the ability to opt-out and assume the customer wants to opt-in.
Using BlueFly as an example. You suggest they have a subscribe checkbox, but I don’t see that in their checkout flow. At all. BlueFly sends out 1 or 2 messages per day, per customer. I administer a shopping portal mail proxy and BF is downright shameless in their marketing assault. IMO it is cearly violating CAN-SPAM.
Then there is the “5-10 business days” for their email system to update? What-ever!