Which company sent the most ‘spam’ in 2014?

It’s an end-of-year list you didn’t know you wanted.

Which brand filled your inbox with corporate clutter? Whose business saw their daily marketing emails lead to the most unsubscribes? Which company’s irrelevant broadcasting made you hit the spam button?

Now, the strict defintion of spam (here’s one from Spamhaus) and the recipient’s perception can be two different things.

They may well have subscribed in the first place, but if they become uninterested, emails become irrelevant, or too many are sent, then this can the same as spam to them. They may also report such emails as spam.

It’s not all about naming and shaming (although most of it is of course), Unroll.me has also revealed the company with the highest number of subscriptions in its inaugural Spammy Awards. Lets check out the winners and losers, relatively speaking.

From a total number of 117,548,525 email subscriptions, Unroll.me discovered…

Top unsubscribed subscriptions

2nd Place: Moveon.org (48% unsubscribe rate)

3rd Place: Jetsetter (47% unsubscribe rate)

4th Place: Monster (44% unsubscribe rate)

5th Place: SlideShare (44% unsubscribe rate)

Sends the most emails

2nd Place: Groupon (276 emails/user)

3rd Place: Facebook (251 emails/user)

4th Place: LinkedIn (193 emails/user)

5th Place: Twitter (116 emails/user)

Most popular day for email

2nd Place: Black Friday (average 21.62 emails/user were sent)

3rd Place: Veteran’s Day (average 17.74 emails/user were sent)

4th Place: Thanksgiving (average 17.51 emails/user were sent)

5th Place: Election Day (average 17.48 emails/user were sent)

Most popular subscriptions

2nd Place: Facebook (64% subscription rate)

3rd Place: Google (58% subscription rate)

4th Place: LinkedIn (52% subscription rate)

5th Place: Twitter (48% subscription rate)

Best practice

Here are a few insights to remember.

Whether offering content, promotions or discounts, just be completely clear about what your recipient can expect from clicking open. If you lead them on with erroneous or disappointing content, your emails won’t get read again.

Offer a variety of email content. If you’re sending a newsletter one day, send something more personalised the nest time. If you’re offering your latest products one day, offer a discount or promotion another.

As an email marketer you receive just as many emails as the rest of us. Go through your inboxes and your spam folders, and really think about what you read and why. The best exercise you can do is put yourself in the shoes of the people you email.

If you want to succeed in email marketing we have loads of really helpful resources on the blog. Download our massive and comprehensive Email Marketing Best Practice Guide. Also For a helpful list on what to avoid, check out these 45 words you should avoid in your email subject lines, for guidance on what to measure here are the 16 most important email marketing KPIs for your business and learn how fashion ecommerce brands use email marketing.