The Unsubscribe Link You Should Make Easy

What happens when it is hard to find

Somebody wants to stop receiving your email. They scan the bottom, see nothing obvious, and reach for the button that definitely works.

That button is the one marked spam.

The outcome is the same for them and considerably worse for you. An unsubscribe is a quiet removal. A spam complaint is a signal to their provider that your mail is unwanted.

Enough of those and your messages start landing in junk for everybody, including the people who want them.

What a complaint actually costs

More than losing the subscriber, which was going to happen either way.

Mail providers watch complaint rates closely. A small proportion is normal; a rising one affects how your future mail is treated.

That effect reaches everything sent from your domain, which for a small business frequently includes quotes and ordinary correspondence.

So a hidden unsubscribe link on a newsletter can end up putting your invoices in somebody's junk folder, and nobody would ever connect the two.

What easy means

• Visible, in a readable size rather than tiny grey text.
• At the bottom, where people look for it.
• One click, without logging in or confirming twice.
• Working immediately, with a clear confirmation.
• Honoured promptly, which is also a legal requirement.

The third is where most annoyance comes from. A link that opens a page asking for the email address, then a reason, then a confirmation, is a form somebody will abandon in favour of the spam button.

A worked example

A retailer whose unsubscribe was a small link leading to a preference centre requiring a login.

Their complaint rate was several times what their provider considered acceptable, and they had been warned twice.

Deliverability had fallen noticeably, and they had assumed the cause was content.

They replaced it with a single visible link that unsubscribed immediately and said so.

Complaints fell to almost nothing within two sends. Unsubscribes rose slightly, which was the same people leaving by the door instead of the window.

Their open rate improved, because the remaining list actually wanted the mail and because delivery had recovered.

Offering less rather than nothing

A middle option worth having, provided it does not obstruct.

Some people want fewer emails rather than none. A choice between unsubscribing entirely and switching to a quarterly summary keeps a proportion of them.

The condition is that unsubscribing must remain the easy, obvious option on the same page. An offer presented instead of the exit is an obstruction.

Presented alongside it, as a genuine alternative, it works and nobody resents it.

For a small list sending rarely, this is usually unnecessary complexity. For a business sending weekly, it is worth having.

The counter-case

Where a confirmation step is reasonable.

Where the address receives transactional messages as well, and unsubscribing from everything would stop somebody receiving their invoices.

There a single question distinguishing marketing from account messages is genuinely helpful rather than obstructive.

And where somebody may have clicked accidentally from a forwarded email, a brief confirmation prevents removing the wrong person.

The distinction is whether the extra step exists to help the recipient or to slow them down, and most people can tell which they are looking at.

Reducing why people leave

The prior question, since the easiest unsubscribe is the one nobody wants to use.

Most people leave for one of three reasons: too many emails, nothing useful in them, or they had forgotten signing up.

The first two are within your control and are the subject of everything else worth writing about email.

The third is about the gap between signing up and hearing from you. Somebody who agreed in March and receives nothing until November has forgotten who you are, and a message from an unfamiliar name reads as spam.

Sending something within a few weeks of somebody joining prevents that entirely, and it is the cheapest reduction in unsubscribes available.

Not taking it personally

Worth saying, because businesses do.

An unsubscribe is somebody tidying their inbox, not a judgement on your business. Most are people whose circumstances changed rather than people who disliked something.

Chasing them, or emailing to ask why, is a mistake. They have just told you they want less contact and the response should not be more.

The exception is a customer relationship where the unsubscribe is a surprise and you have another reason to be in touch, which is a phone call rather than an email.

And a spike in unsubscribes after one particular send is useful information about that send rather than about the list.

What to do with the address

Remove it and leave it removed.

Re-adding somebody because they bought something later, or because a new list was imported from an old file, is the most common way businesses generate complaints.

Keep a suppression record of everybody who unsubscribed, so that any future import cannot reintroduce them.

Most email services do this automatically within one account, and the failure happens when a list is exported, edited in a spreadsheet and imported somewhere else.

That is worth knowing before changing providers, which is exactly when it happens.

The list-unsubscribe header

A technical detail worth knowing about because it is largely invisible and increasingly expected.

Mail can carry an instruction that lets the recipient's own software offer an unsubscribe button, above the message, alongside the sender name.

Several providers now display that prominently, and it is the easiest possible route: one tap, no page to visit.

Providers also increasingly treat its presence as a sign of a legitimate sender, so it helps delivery as well as reducing complaints.

Any proper email service adds it automatically, which is another reason not to send bulk mail from an ordinary mailbox where it will be absent.

If you are unsure whether yours has it, the provider's documentation will say, and it is usually enabled by default.

Checking yours

1. Open your own last email on a phone.
2. Find the unsubscribe link and time how long it takes.
3. Click it and count the steps.
4. Check it worked and that you received confirmation.
5. Check your complaint rate in your email service.
6. Re-subscribe yourself afterwards.

The fifth is the number that matters and the one nobody looks at. Most services show it, and a rising figure is the earliest warning that something needs attention.

What the law requires alongside this is covered in what CASL requires of a small business.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.