Microsoft has added an unsubscribe button to its new Windows Live email user interface. This surprised many email marketers. But, later marketers are calling for other Internet service provider — especially Yahoo! and AOL — to follow suit, writes Ken Magill for Direct Mag.

Microsoft last week became the first e-mail box provider to answer e-mail marketers’ calls to include an unsubscribe button in its interface so consumers will be less likely to mistakenly report permission-based commercial e-mail as spam.

Josh Baer, chief technology officer of lead-generation firm Datran’s Skylist unit, said he and others in the e-mail industry have been lobbying ISPs to put an unsubscribe button in their user interfaces for years.

The ISPs and ESPs had given positive reaction to the idea for a year or two, but also very noncommittal.

A spokeswoman for Yahoo!, Kelly Podboy, said the portal has no plans to add an unsubscribe button to its user interface. Seems like they are confident the This is Spam/This is Not Spam buttons could help them adjust filtering technology based on user feedback and make correct decision about which emails are spam.

Email arriving at Microsoft with a valid list-unsubscribe function — a line of code in the header that allows ISPs to automatically forward unsubscribe requests back to the sender — will get an unsubscribe link as long as it passes Microsoft’s internal reputation test determining the sender is not a spammer.

Missing this function, it will display complaint button withou the unsubscribe link.

This product is currently in beta. One of the first concern occured when knowing this feature is the reliablility of the reputation test. If a spammer can get through the test and user clicks on the unsubscribe button, it would confirm that the email address in question is active to the spammer.

Source: Direct Mag.