Opt-Outs & Unsubscribes
SurveyMethods gives every email recipient a way to unsubscribe, and it honors those requests automatically on all future sends. This keeps your mailings compliant and protects your sender reputation without any manual list-scrubbing on your part.
How Recipients Unsubscribe
Every survey invitation and reminder automatically includes an unsubscribe footer at the bottom of the email:
Don’t want to receive these emails? Unsubscribe.
When a recipient clicks Unsubscribe, they’re taken to a confirmation page letting them know they’ve been removed. No login is required, and the link is unique to each recipient.
What Happens When Someone Opts Out
An opt-out is recorded at the account level, not just for the survey they received. Once a recipient unsubscribes, that email address is suppressed for every future send from your account.
The suppression applies to both:
- Contacts and contact groups you send to
- Email addresses you type in manually when composing a message
On your next send, any suppressed address is silently skipped before the email goes out.
Email Matching
Suppression matching is normalized so it stays reliable:
| Rule | Effect |
|---|---|
| Case | Jane@Example.com matches jane@example.com |
| Whitespace | Leading and trailing spaces are ignored |
This means an address stays suppressed even if it’s stored with different capitalization in another contact list.
Where Opt-Outs Come From
Suppressed addresses can originate from a few sources:
- Recipient unsubscribe — someone clicked the Unsubscribe link
- Migrated — opt-outs carried over from your previous account data
Good Practices
- Leave the unsubscribe footer in place — it’s required for compliant sending and is added for you automatically.
- If you add a recipient back to a contact list, they’ll still be skipped while suppressed, so there’s no need to manually clean your lists after an opt-out.
Need help? Browse more articles in the Contacts section.
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