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37% of Consumers Unsubscribe via Spam Button

In the latest sign of bad news for email direct marketers, more than on in three consumers use the spam button on their email client to unsubscribe from email lists they have voluntarily joined.

In a recent Return Path survey, nearly 79 percent of consumers admitted that they have hit the “spam” or “junk” email button to get rid of email they don’t want. And nearly 37 percent do it as a way to unsubscribe from things they had asked to receive.

This number is up slightly from a January Return Path survey that had 34 percent of consumers reporting marketing emails to be spam just because they did not want to receive the emails any longer.

One reason often cited is that consumers are simply overwhelmed with the amount of email they receive: Most consumers get at least 100 emails a week (with 35 percent getting more than 500) - half of which tends to be commercial.