About Unsubscribes

When a subscribed contact in your audience opts out of future email and SMS marketing, it's called an unsubscribe. CAN-SPAM, the Canada Anti-Spam Law, and other anti-spam laws require Mailchimp to have an unsubscribe process in place.

In this article, you'll learn about unsubscribes in Mailchimp.

Things to know

Here are some things to know.

• You must include an unsubscribe method in all of your emails and SMS campaigns. Learn more about CAN-SPAM, the Canada Anti-Spam Law (CASL), and other anti-spam laws.
• If you use Mailchimp templates, we’ll include an unsubscribe link for you. Custom email templates need to include the unsubscribe merge tag. STOP, CANCEL, and UNSUBSCRIBE are allowed for SMS messages. If you don't include it, Mailchimp will add a footer to your email that includes an unsubscribe link.
• Mailchimp doesn't allow outside unsubscribe processes, so you need to use the unsubscribe link we provide in your email templates.
• If you see high rates of abuse complaints or unsubscribes, we recommend using the double opt-in process for audience subscriptions.
• High unsubscribe rates can lead to account suspension. If your account has been suspended, please follow these steps to resolve the issue.
• For security reasons, when someone unsubscribes from your email marketing, Mailchimp automatically hides their full email address in the unsubscribe confirmation page and URL. If you add third-party code to your unsubscribe form, we recommend you make sure that the service you’re using also has safeguards in place to protect the privacy of your contacts.

How unsubscribes work in Mailchimp

Mailchimp treats all audiences in your account independently. When a contact unsubscribes from an audience, they opt out of marketing emails and SMS messages for that audience only. This is especially helpful if you manage audiences for multiple clients within a single account. A subscribed contact who opts out of marketing content from 1 client won't be unsubscribed from other client audiences.

If you have multiple audiences for a single organization, it's best to manage 1 primary audience, and use tags to organize contacts. You can then send emails to subscribed contacts who're tagged or create segments based on tag data.

When you use a primary audience, the unsubscribe process is streamlined. If a contact keeps receiving marketing content from other sources within your company even after they believe they’ve opted out, it may result in complaints. This could put your account at risk for compliance issues.

If you want to make sure specific contacts aren't added to your audiences as subscribed, import their addresses as part of a suppression list.

Accidental unsubscribes

To help limit accidental unsubscribes caused by inbox filters from impacting your list, Mailchimp has a confirmation step when a customer clicks unsubscribe in the body of your emails. For example, when a customer clicks the unsubscribe link from the footer of your marketing email, we’ll take them to your unsubscribe form to confirm that they’d like to unsubscribe from your list.

There are a few reasons a subscribed contact may show as unsubscribed when they didn't request it.

• They forwarded the email from their inbox, and the secondary recipient clicked the unsubscribe link. Unsubscribe links are tied to the original recipient. Encourage contacts to use the Forward to a Friend link instead.
• Some inbox filters click each link in your email, and that can accidentally unsubscribe contacts. If the contact knows they didn't forward your email, ask them to contact their IT or hosting service about this issue.
• Did you post your version of the email on a website? If someone clicks the unsubscribe link on a shared email, it will unsubscribe the original recipient. Set up an email archive to protect against this.
• Another account admin may have accidentally unsubscribed them.

I thought new changes from Google and Yahoo required a 1-click unsubscribe, why is Mailchimp implementing a 2-click unsubscribe process?

In order to reduce the risk of accidental unsubscribes from bot clicks, Mailchimp is implementing a new unsubscribe link process. When your subscribed contacts click on the unsubscribe link in an email body or footer, they will be taken to an unsubscribe page. They'll need to click “unsubscribe” on this page, too, ultimately requiring 2 clicks before the contact is opted out.

However, this change won't affect delivery to Google and Yahoo. What inbox hosts think of as a ‘1-click unsubscribe’ process is a bit different; the 2-click unsubscribe process only affects the unsubscribe link within an email, which has no impact on the 1-click unsubscribe process available via the email headers that are part of the email's source code. Gmail and Yahoo will require 1-click unsubscribe functionality via email headers, not the email body.

If a contact wants to receive your emails again, they’ll have to resubscribe to your audience.