Prompted by user complaints and “late night talk show host jokes,” LinkedIn says it has begun to cut down on the number of emails it sends its members.
The business networking platform says it wants to make sure the messages users receive are less frequent and more useful.
To that end, it has started sending a weekly digest in place of individual emails to users receiving an overload of invitations to connect. And for people who subscribe to multiple groups, LinkedIn now aggregates updates to those groups into one message.
LinkedIn’s Aatif Awan writes on the company’s official blog:
“The results so far have been very encouraging. For every 10 emails we used to send, we’ve removed 4 of them. Already, member complaints have been cut in half. And this is just the beginning.”
LinkedIn has become notorious for the number of messages it sends. As Fortune puts it:
“A quick Google search of “LinkedIn email” provides a glimpse at how users of the professional social network feel about its presence in their inboxes. The first page of search results includes “How to Stop Annoying LinkedIn Emails,” “Turn Off Annoying LinkedIn Emails,” “How to Disable all of LinkedIn Emails,” and even “Judge Allows Lawsuit Over LinkedIn Emails to Progress.”
Wired’s Katie Collins has another take:
“It’s hard to judge what’s more mind-numbing — the emails from LinkedIn reminding you of your “work anniversary” or having to endure other people’s boring tweets about them (“No, LinkedIn, a work anniversary is not a thing”). Either way, they are the cause of many an invisible eye roll or inward yawn.”
Here are just a small sample of the complaints found on Twitter:
LinkedIn is the candy crush request of emails
— Dennis Wilson (@DennisWilson53) July 21, 2015
> Unsubscribe from LinkedIn > Delete email account > Sell house, live in woods > Find bottle in river > Has note inside > It’s from LinkedIn
— daryl (@darylginn) April 21, 2015
LinkedIn is like Beetlejuice. You say it too many times and they’re going to email you.
— Michael Keith (@layersmichael) June 19, 2015
“For every 10 emails we used to send, we’ve removed 4 of them” http://t.co/gaqu0fR0B5 LinkedIn on sending you less email. Still 5 too many.
— Suzan Bond (@suzanbond) July 28, 2015
LinkedIn reminds its users that they’ve had the power to control or even stop the messages from the beginning. That’s done through either the “unsubscribe” option at the bottom of e-mails or through the settings page on their site.
In any case, an effort to reign in the number of emails LinkedIn sends to members probably won’t hurt its branding with those who believe enough is enough.
LinkedIn Mobile Photo via Shutterstock
Actually LinkedIN is falling down on its eMail. When I contact someone via LinkedIN I am supposed to see the reply forwarded to my Gmail. That is how I set it up because my eMail life is on Gmail, not LinkedIN. But much of the time the reply does Not get forwarded by LinkedIN and I have to log in to LinkedIn to look for it.
Hey Tom,
Great news!
LinkedIn emails in fact can be very annoying sometimes, but some of them are very useful.
I personally like the emails with the incoming messages, for someone who doesn’t check their LinkedIn profile regularly that’s a good feature 🙂
Do they say which emails they are going to stop sending?