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About Unsubscribes

You can add your own unsubscribe link, use Transactional Email's unsubscribe merge tag, or use an automatic unsubscribe footer.

Transactional Email automatically adds a List-Unsubscribe header to all emails that include a Transactional Email-generated unsubscribe link. If recipients use an email program that supports the List-Unsubscribe header (like Hotmail, AOL, or Yahoo), they can use the option in their email program to unsubscribe.

The merge tag consists of the word UNSUB, followed by a colon, and then a full website address (with http:// or https://). Recipients will be redirected to this website address when they click the link, so it should be an existing page on your site. Here's an example:

*|UNSUB:http://mywebsite.com/unsub|*

The redirect URL will be appended to include two query string parameters that can be used for processing the unsubscribe in your own system or database:

  • md_id: The _id, as provided in the API call and webhooks of the specific message where the unsubscribe link was clicked
  • md_email: A URL-encoded and obfuscated version of the recipient's email address. If displayed, the email is shown using the format X****@x***.***.

    In order to use the email address for further processing in your system, you can use the rules engine and webhooks to identify the unsubscribe email address. For more information, see Rules Engine and Webhooks.

The footer can be added in your Sending Defaults or using Rules. The footer includes information about the address the email was sent to, along with an unsubscribe link. You do not need a website to process these unsubscribes. Transactional Email will direct the recipient an unbranded web page confirming that the recipient address has been unsubscribed.

When someone unsubscribes using a Transactional Email unsubscribe link, the information is sent back to Transactional Email to process. The message status is changed to Unsubscribe, and a sender-level rejection is added for that recipient address.

While the email is on the Rejection Denylist, if you're using the same 'from' address on emails sent through Transactional Email, any emails sent to that recipient will be rejected. The rejection is temporary, and in many cases it doesn't make sense for people to unsubscribe from transactional emails. However, this allows senders to get feedback about how people are engaged with their emails and the rejection prevents continued sending to someone who has signaled they don't wish to receive more emails.

You may remove an email address from the Rejection Denylist list for a small reputation hit. Recipients shouldn't be removed in bulk from the rejection list since they're there because of a bounce, unsubscribe, or abuse complaint. Mistakes happen, or recipients don't always understand, so removing recipients from the rejection list is possible.

 

Note

The Mailchimp *|UNSUB|* merge tag would need to be modified to include a URL for the Transactional Email unsubscribe merge tag if you're already using a Mailchimp template.