Email campaign unsubscribes

Review how many people unsubscribe from your mailing lists to learn what content keeps your audience engaged.

Last updated August 23, 2024

An email campaign's footer always displays an Unsubscribe link. When someone unsubscribes from a campaign, their name and email address are removed from all your mailing lists.

Unsubscribes are normal, but if you notice an unusually high number of unsubscribes after one campaign, think about its content and why people might be reacting negatively.

Note

Squarespace campaigns automatically include an unsubscribe link. Don't add additional unsubscribe links manually, as they won't function correctly, which may cause subscribers to mark your campaigns as spam.

How recipients unsubscribe from campaigns

Recipients can unsubscribe by clicking the Unsubscribe link at the bottom of any campaign. This unsubscribes the recipient from all the sender's mailing lists.

After a recipient clicks Unsubscribe, a message appears that includes the option to resubscribe:

unsubscribe.png

If they click Subscribe again, a message appears confirming that they've been added back to the mailing list:

resubscribe.png

Helping recipients unsubscribe

If one of your recipients is having trouble unsubscribing, you can opt them out of marketing emails in the Contacts panel.

Track unsubscribes

To review who unsubscribed after a specific campaign:

  1. In the Email Campaigns dashboard, click Sent.
  2. Open any sent email.
  3. Click the Unsubscribed row in the table below the graph.

To review all the addresses that have been removed from a specific mailing list:

  1. In the Lists & Segments panel, click the mailing list.
  2. Export the mailing list. This downloads a .zip file that includes three files, including the unsubscribed users.

To learn more about measuring the impact of your campaigns, visit Tracking email campaign analytics.

Tip

We deactivate unsubscribe links in test emails so they don't affect your Unsubscribe analytics.

How unsubscribing affects .csv imports

How .csv imports treat email addresses varies depending on if the recipient unsubscribed from an unsubscribe link or if a site owner or contributor removed the address manually.

Recipient unsubscribed

When a recipient unsubscribes, their email address is removed from all mailing lists they're currently on, and it can't be added back to any of these lists, even if a .csv file with the address is imported.

If their email address is imported to a totally new mailing list, it will be added to the new list.

Contributor removed

When you or another site contributor remove a recipient's email address from a mailing list manually, importing a .csv file with the address will add it back to the list.

Unsubscribed vs. cleaned

People are removed from your mailing lists automatically when they click the unsubscribe link, when they mark your email as spam, or when their address is "cleaned."

Cleaned addresses are ones that we automatically remove because they "hard bounce." A hard bounce is when our system sends an email and discovers that no inbox exists for that address. This could be due to fake or misspelled email addresses, or an email account that has been discontinued. Removing these email addresses reduces bounce rates and helps improve deliverability for all your campaigns.

Tip

In an individual campaign's analytics, the unsubscribed number does not include cleaned addresses. When you export a mailing list, you can review all the unsubscribed email addresses and cleaned email address in separate lists. 

The unsubscribe link is part of a campaign's footer and has limited styling options. The font of the link text follows the campaign's global text link styles and the color is always either black or white, depending on the background color. This ensures that users can see and use the link at all times.

Tip

Learn why it's important to make it easy for subscribers to unsubscribe.

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