Email unsubscribe

Pour :Administrateur

View of the 'email unsubscribe' page

Unsubscribe (opt-out) is the mechanism by which a recipient indicates that they no longer wish to receive campaign emails from your organization.

This page explains how Unisoft handles this automatically, what you see on the admin side, and what you can (or cannot) do about it.

Why it matters

Unsubscribe is:

• A legal obligation: the GDPR (Europe) and CAN-SPAM Act (USA) require that a recipient be able to unsubscribe easily and free of charge.
• A best practice: sending to people who don't want to receive degrades your sender reputation with providers (Gmail, Outlook, etc.) and increases the risk that your future sends end up as spam.
• A sign of respect to your donors and congregants: they must remain in control of the communication you address to them.

How it works for the recipient

The Unsubscribe link in the email

Every email sent via the Message Campaigns module must contain an Unsubscribe link:

Unsubscribe

Two ways to guarantee its presence:

1. You place the {{mailing_unsubscribe}} variable in your content (recommended) — Unisoft replaces the variable with the personalized unsubscribe URL. This is the most reliable and predictable way.
2. An automatic mechanism may inject a block at the bottom of the body if the sender has enabled the option, but this injection is not guaranteed in all cases (depending on channel, template, configuration). Don't rely on it alone.

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Recommendation: always place the variable explicitly

To avoid any bad surprises (email sent without unsubscribe link = GDPR non-compliance risk), systematically place {{mailing_unsubscribe}} in your email templates and in your free-content campaigns. See Email template variables for syntax.

The native Gmail / Outlook button

In addition to the visible link, Unisoft also sends a technical header List-Unsubscribe (compliant with the RFC 2369 standard) that lets modern email clients (Gmail, Outlook, Apple Mail) display a native Unsubscribe button at the top of the message — often next to the sender.

For the recipient, this means they can unsubscribe in one click from their mailbox, without even opening the email.

What happens on click

When the recipient clicks on Unsubscribe:

1. 1

   Call to the Unisoft API

   A call is made to the URL https://api.unisoft.world/mailing/unsubscribe/<organization>/<send> — the identifier of the current send is authoritative.

2. 2

   Record in mailing_unsubscribe

   Unisoft records the unsubscribe in the mailing_unsubscribe collection with a composite key: organization + email.

   This means: for this organization specifically, this email address is now unsubscribed.

3. 3

   Visual confirmation

   The recipient sees a Unsubscribe Confirmed message in their browser.

No email confirmation is sent — you don't send an email to someone who just asked to stop receiving them.

What happens next on the Unisoft side

On the next email campaign send to this recipient:

1. The Unisoft backend consults the unsubscribe list before each send.

2. If the recipient's email is in mailing_unsubscribe for your organization, the send is marked as error before even going out.

3. The error visible in the campaign detail will be:

   The email address email@example.com has unsubscribed

4. The contact remains in your base — they are not deleted, nor marked as archived. Only campaign email sends are blocked for them.

Consequences for the contact on the admin side

• The contact remains visible in the Contacts module, with all their information.
• They can continue to receive SMS (email unsubscribe doesn't block the SMS channel — GDPR allows essential communication channels).
• They can continue to receive transactional emails not related to campaigns: payment confirmations, tax receipts, form submission acknowledgments. These emails are essential to your contractual relationship and are not affected by the marketing opt-out.

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Unsubscribe scope

Unisoft unsubscribe applies only to message campaigns (Message Campaigns module). The following emails will continue to be sent:

• Payment confirmations
• Tax receipts
• Form submission confirmations
• Transactional notifications

These emails are considered essential to the relationship between your organization and the contact.

Unsubscribe is by email and by organization

Two important points:

By email, not by contact

The unsubscribe key is {organization, email} — not the contact identifier (contactId). This has a practical consequence:

• If two different contacts share the same email address (rare but possible — typically two spouses using the same email), an unsubscribe unsubscribes both.
• If you correct the email address of an unsubscribed contact to a new address never used before, the new email will start receiving your campaigns again (until a possible new unsubscribe).

By organization, not multi-tenant

Unsubscribe applies only to your organization. If the same person is also a contact in another Unisoft organization, they continue to receive campaigns there (unless they also unsubscribe from that other organization).

This is consistent: each organization is responsible for its own communication.

What you can do

• Consult the list of unsubscribe errors in the detail page of a campaign (Failed tab) — you will see the recipients who unsubscribed.
• Stop soliciting these recipients by email — this is enforced technically anyway.

What you cannot do from admin

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No re-subscribe from admin

Unsubscribe is permanent on the Unisoft side. No admin function lets you remove a contact from the mailing_unsubscribe list:

• No unsubscribed management screen.
• No Re-subscribe button on the contact profile.
• No admin API to switch an email back to authorized.

This is deliberate: an unsubscribe is an explicit request from the recipient, and reactivating it without their consent would be GDPR non-compliant.

If a contact explicitly asks you to re-subscribe them, contact Unisoft support: removal can be done manually in the database after verification of the request.

Best practices

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Limit unsubscribes

Unsubscribes often signal a problem:

• Too many sends: 3 emails per week is too much. Space them out.
• Too broad targeting: a member might not want to receive your pledge reminders if they're not relevant to them. Be precise in targeting by category.
• Irrelevant content: if your emails look like ads, they will be experienced as spam. Be warm, personalized, useful.

Monitor the unsubscribe rate: > 2% per campaign is a warning signal.

Special cases

• Unsubscribe from a test email: if you send a test email to your own address and accidentally click on Unsubscribe, you unsubscribe yourself from your own organization. Contact support to re-subscribe.
• Email bounced before unsubscribe: an email rejected by the recipient's server (full inbox, non-existent address) does not trigger automatic unsubscribe on the Unisoft side. The status will be ERROR but the address can be retried in a future campaign.
• Unsubscribe and tax receipt: an unsubscribed contact continues to receive their tax receipts by email — they are not considered marketing communication.

Going further

• Create a message campaign — where the mailing_unsubscribe variable can be placed manually
• Track a message campaign — where to see unsubscribe errors in detail
• Message Campaigns — the general module list