Tricky Exclusion

Alex Read

Active Member
I have a footer that says: Not interesting? Send a reply with 'remove me please'.

Now when people reply they reply with "remove me please"

I want to create a filter in gmail that finds all mails with the words

"remove me please" BUT it needs to exclude my original expression: Not interesting? Send a reply with 'remove me please'.

Demo.jpg

Because otherwise even if people are keen it's finding the original expression in the copy of the original email!

Any idea how to create a filter that does this?
 
I have a footer that says: Not interesting? Send a reply with 'remove me please'.

Now when people reply they reply with "remove me please"

I want to create a filter in gmail that finds all mails with the words

"remove me please" BUT it needs to exclude my original expression: Not interesting? Send a reply with 'remove me please'.

View attachment 7164

Because otherwise even if people are keen it's finding the original expression in the copy of the original email!

Any idea how to create a filter that does this?
You can use brackets and boolean operators in Gmail search:
(("remove me please") AND NOT ("Not interesting? Reply with 'remove me please'"))
 
I thought so too but no matter what I try it gets stuck.

e.g. (("remove me please") AND NOT ("Not interesting? Reply with 'remove me please'"))

Will find "remove me please" but then it will exclude those who actually want removal because of:

AND NOT ("Not interesting? Reply with 'remove me please'")
(("remove me please") -("Not interesting? Reply with 'remove me please'"))

Since that is in the message body.

I'm trying to work out how people who use this 'reply' type unsub message do it!

The reason I'm doing this is:
1) It reduces the links in my message and looks less like a newsletter outreach email.
2) Increase responses to my email account
3) It looks much more like a personal email which I want to do!

(As per your advice on my spam thread)

Any other ideas how people filter this since the text to use is always in the email response since how else do you tell people what to reply with to unsub! I also want to use it for people to respond with interested and other stuff, but first need to solve this!
 
I thought so too but no matter what I try it gets stuck.

e.g. (("remove me please") AND NOT ("Not interesting? Reply with 'remove me please'"))

Will find "remove me please" but then it will exclude those who actually want removal because of:




Since that is in the message body.

I'm trying to work out how people who use this 'reply' type unsub message do it!

The reason I'm doing this is:
1) It reduces the links in my message and looks less like a newsletter outreach email.
2) Increase responses to my email account
3) It looks much more like a personal email which I want to do!

(As per your advice on my spam thread)

Any other ideas how people filter this since the text to use is always in the email response since how else do you tell people what to reply with to unsub! I also want to use it for people to respond with interested and other stuff, but first need to solve this!

This is because they reply and leave the original message intact. So either instruct them to send an empty message back with only those three words in it, but be prepared that this will leave you also with work since you need some header info for proper bounce processing (and some will not send an empty message and you will have errors), or better, ask them to include the words in the subject line, but much better it is to prepare a mailto: link and have the keywords in the subject line, so you do not filter the message body.
 
Thanks!

How do I do this?
prepare a mailto: link and have the keywords in the subject line, so you do not filter the message body.
Surely that will still be a link?
 
Thanks!

How do I do this?
prepare a mailto: link and have the keywords in the subject line, so you do not filter the message body.
Surely that will still be a link?
It is a mailto: link, not http. It gets similar weight and scrutiny as the header links (which include http and mailto).
 
Do you think it's worth doing this vs a normal unsub link in terms of deliverability?
For deliverability the unsub link is preferable, since some providers might hold it against you if it is a mailto unsub, as that usually implies more complexity (more ways to fail when mail client does not handle mailto links well; more clicks: not a one-click-unsub-option as it requires at least the send click as well; etc).
 
I figured that the 'reply to' would get more natural emails coming into the inbox and improve the Google domain score/rep.

Will think of another way to get more replies.
 
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