Opt-Out Lists

The federal CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 requires email marketers to provide a method for "opting out" or unsubscribing from email marketing messages. The law requires marketers to respond to opt-out requests promptly by removing those email addresses from their lists.

Many ThinkSend clients provide an "opt out/unsubscribe" link in the email message (usually at the bottom of the email). In general, clicking this link automatically removes the recipient from the email deployment list used for that campaign.

Sounds easy, right? But there might be a catch.

What if you decide to use the same email list for a future email marketing campaign with a different email deployment company? Will those "unsubscribed" email addresses be removed from your list?

Usually, the answer is NO.

In order to ensure that you don't send your emails to people who don't want to receive them, you must ask the deployment company to provide you with a list of "unsubscribed" email addresses (the "opt-out list"). You then have two options:

The Hard Way: manually remove the unsubscribed email addresses from your master list.

The ThinkSend Way: provide your opt-out/unsubscribe list to the next deployment company you plan to use. They should be able to automatically remove all "opt-out" addresses from your master email list (which is usually supplied as an Excel file). That's what we do for you at ThinkSend.

Keep in mind that when you're using multiple email lists, it's easy to lose track of some people that may have unsubscribed from one list during a previous campaign, but still appear on another list you'll use in the future.

At ThinkSend, we recommend that you maintain a separate opt-out/unsubscribe list that includes all unsubscribed email addresses from all your campaigns - and always ask your deployment company to ensure that those addresses are removed from your master list before deploying your next email blast.

Confused? Just ask us and we'll help you through it!