Unsubscribes

This page explains how recipients unsubscribe from your campaigns, what Emailit adds to every campaign email so they can, and how you can see and change opt-outs yourself. It also covers how unsubscribes relate to transactional email.

Three ways to stop a campaign

Emailit checks three things before it sends a campaign email. Each one is a different kind of opt-out:

Unsubscribe links in campaign emails

Headers added for you

Every campaign email includes these headers, with a link unique to the recipient and the campaign:

List-Unsubscribe: <unsubscribe link>
List-Unsubscribe-Post: List-Unsubscribe=One-Click

List-Unsubscribe-Post marks the link as one-click (RFC 8058). Mailbox providers such as Gmail and Yahoo use these headers to show their own Unsubscribe button next to the sender name, and they expect them from bulk senders. You don’t need to add or configure anything.

The link in your content

Put a visible unsubscribe link in every campaign as well, with the {{unsubscribe_url}} merge tag:

<p>
  You're receiving this because you subscribed to Acme news.
  <a href="{{unsubscribe_url}}">Unsubscribe</a>
</p>

• In the Dragit editor, insert it as a link: {{unsubscribe_url}} is listed with the special links.
• In the Rich-text editor, type @ and pick Unsubscribe URL.
• In the HTML editor, type the tag yourself, exactly as {{unsubscribe_url}}, with no spaces inside the braces.

The Send step of the campaign wizard checks for the tag and shows “Missing unsubscribe link!” when it’s not in the HTML. Emailit doesn’t block the send, but anti-spam laws such as CAN-SPAM and GDPR, and the bulk sender rules of Gmail and Yahoo, expect a working unsubscribe link in marketing email.

In test sends, the link points to a test address and doesn’t unsubscribe anyone.

The unsubscribe page

When a recipient opens their unsubscribe link, Emailit shows a hosted page and unsubscribes them right away. No confirmation click is needed.

• They leave every audience. The contact’s subscription is turned off in every audience it belongs to, not only the ones the campaign went to. The contact itself and its marketing status don’t change.
• They can say why. The page asks “Tell us why you’re unsubscribing” with the options Not interested, Too many emails, Never signed up, This is a spam and Other. Answering is optional.
• They can undo it. Resubscribe turns their subscription back on in every audience they belong to and shows “Resubscribe successful!”.

The page doesn’t offer a preference center: people can’t pick which audiences to stay on. If you need that, link to a page on your own site and update their subscriptions with the API.

Each unsubscribe sends one email.unsubscribed event and a subscriber.updated event for each audience. A resubscribe sends email.resubscribed and subscriber.updated. Receive them with webhooks to sync opt-outs to your own systems. See Event types.

Unsubscribes in campaign reports

Unsubscribes made through the link are recorded against the campaign that sent it:

• The Unsubscribed card on the campaign’s Overview shows the count and the share of sent emails.
• The Unsubscribes tab lists each one with Email, First name, Last name, Reason, IP address and Unsubscribed At. Search it, or filter by reason or date.
• The PDF report includes an Unsubscribe reasons breakdown.

The Reason column shows the reason recorded with the unsubscribe, when there is one. Recorded reasons appear as Manual, Unsubscribe Link or Complaint.

Unsubscribes you make yourself in the dashboard or the API change the subscription, but they aren’t linked to a campaign and don’t appear in these reports. See Campaign reports.

Complaints

When a recipient marks a campaign email as spam and their mailbox provider reports it back, the email’s status becomes Complained and, with the default automatic suppression settings, the address is added to your suppression list with type complaint. Campaigns skip suppressed addresses, so the person gets no further campaigns. See Bounces and complaints.

Manage opt-outs yourself

In the dashboard

With the API

Unsubscribe from one audience by updating the subscriber. You can use the email address instead of the sub_ ID:

curl https://api.emailit.com/v2/audiences/aud_5hJ2kL8mNp4Qr/subscribers/ada@example.com \
  -X POST \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $EMAILIT_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{ "subscribed": false }'

Set the marketing status of up to 100 contacts at once with the unsubscribe or resubscribe bulk action, or of one contact with unsubscribed on Update a contact:

curl https://api.emailit.com/v2/contacts/bulk \
  -X POST \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $EMAILIT_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{ "action": "unsubscribe", "ids": ["con_2kq8Vt4xLm7Rz", "con_9fW3pQ1nBc6Yt"] }'

To export your opt-outs, list contacts with unsubscribed=true or subscribers with subscribed=false. See List contacts and List subscribers.

Transactional email and unsubscribes

Unsubscribes and marketing status only control campaigns. Emails you send with the Email API or SMTP, and emails sent by automations, still go out to people who unsubscribed. That’s intended: receipts, password resets and account notices must keep working.

Keep it that way by sending only transactional content through those channels. A few things to know:

• {{unsubscribe_url}} is a campaign merge tag. It isn’t filled in for API, SMTP or automation emails, and those emails don’t get the List-Unsubscribe headers automatically.
• If you send marketing-style email outside campaigns, include your own unsubscribe link and honor it, for example by adding a suppression when someone opts out.
• To stop all email to an address, transactional included, add a suppression with type recipient.

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