And yes, that\u00a0can<\/i>\u00a0be a good thing \u2014 even if the idea of seeing wave after wave of unsubscribes is cold and frightening to your gentle bones.<\/p>\n
Plus, if you’re a bulk sender<\/a><\/strong> (defined as sending 5,000+ emails per day to gmail.com addresses or a similar volume to Yahoo\/AOL addresses), you’re required to have one-click list-unsubscribe in place<\/strong>.<\/p>\n In this article, we\u2019ll cover the list-unsubscribe header in depth \u2014 both what it is, and why it can be beneficial to you. We\u2019ll also cover how to set up list-unsubscribe in GMass and who should and shouldn\u2019t use it.<\/p>\n List-unsubscribe are email headers which shares an unsubscribe mailto link and\/or an unsubscribe URL, plus optional action instructions, with an email client. Email clients will then use that information to add quick unsubscribe links to the messages you send<\/b>.<\/p>\n The concept of list-unsubscribe dates back to 1998 (you can read all about its origins\u00a0here<\/a>) but email clients have adopted it gradually. Very gradually. (For instance, Apple only began processing the list-unsubscribe headers in the Mail app in 2016; Yahoo added it to its mobile apps in 2018.)<\/p>\n List-unsubscribe is a\u00a0user-friendly feature<\/b>: It makes it easier for someone to unsubscribe from a list. There\u2019s no scrolling through and email or hunting for an unsubscribe link. Instead, a person is one immediate click away from getting off an email list.<\/p>\n However, as we\u2019ll discuss,\u00a0it can also be a marketer-friendly feature<\/b>. While it\u00a0does<\/i>\u00a0make it easier for people to get off your list, there\u2019s a real upside nonetheless.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s list-unsubscribe in action in Gmail on desktop.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s list-unsubscribe in action in the Gmail iOS app (it’s only in the options menu).<\/p>\n Here\u2019s list-unsubscribe in action in the Apple Mail desktop app.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s list-unsubscribe in action in the Apple Mail iOS app.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s list-unsubscribe in action in the\u00a0Outlook.com<\/a>\u00a0desktop interface.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s list-unsubscribe in action in the Yahoo Mail app.<\/p>\n And here’s list-unsubscribe in action in the Yahoo Mail mobile app (it’s only in the menu).<\/p>\n There are two ways to send list-unsubscribe headers: A mail-to link and a URL unsubscribe link.<\/p>\n A\u00a0mail-to unsubscribe link<\/b>\u00a0is an email-based list-unsubscribe. With this option, anyone who clicks the email client\u2019s \u201cUnsubscribe\u201d link or button will send an opt-out email to a specified address. The sender\u2019s email software will then unsubscribe that person from marketing emails. This will leave a \u201cpaper trail\u201d of sorts for the user \u2014 they\u2019ll have a copy of that opt-out email in their Sent folder as proof they unsubscribed.<\/p>\n An\u00a0URL unsubscribe link<\/b> is a link to an unsubscribe landing page. This would be similar to clicking the traditional unsubscribe link lower in the email. On that landing page, a user may or may not have to click a button to confirm they\u2019re unsubscribing. (An additional list-unsubscribe header, list-unsubscribe-post, can designate that action.)<\/p>\n As of right now, the four largest email clients (Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, Apple Mail) support the mail-to method; only Gmail also supports the URL method. The mail-to option is considered safer (the URL in the list-unsubscribe header could be a phishing link), which is why it\u2019s the preferred option<\/b>.<\/p>\n If you enable list-unsubscribe headers in GMass, we’ll insert both the mail-to and URL unsubscribe options in your emails.<\/p>\n As of January 2024, we also insert the list-unsubscribe-post header and set it to By adding the list-unsubscribe header to your email, you make it easier for people to get off your list.<\/p>\n And that might be, um, the exact opposite of the goal of email marketing.<\/p>\n At least in theory. In practice, there are\u00a0two compelling reasons why you should employ list-unsubscribe<\/b>\u00a0to make the unsubscribing process easier for those who want it.<\/p>\n A big email list is good. An\u00a0engaged<\/i>\u00a0email list is better.<\/p>\n The prevailing theory goes:\u00a0You don\u2019t want anyone on your marketing list who doesn\u2019t want to be there.<\/b>\u00a0That includes people who would never buy from you, will likely never buy from you, and\/or never engage with your emails.<\/p>\n When you have a list packed with disengaged subscribers it\u00a0skews your stats<\/b>. Why is your conversion rate so low? Maybe it\u2019s because a large number of people on your list would never buy under any circumstances. If they all unsubscribed, suddenly your conversion rates would jump \u2014 because now you\u2019re working with active and potentially active customers. And that also allows you to better\u00a0A\/B test<\/a>\u00a0and assess what works and what doesn\u2019t work.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s say you don\u2019t use list-unsubscribe. Which means there\u2019s no easy access unsubscribe link at the top of your emails.<\/p>\n You know what\u00a0is<\/i>\u00a0easily accessible at the top of every email client? The \u201cmark as spam\u201d button.<\/p>\n If people opt to unsubscribe rather than mark you as spam, that\u2019s good news for your deliverability.\u00a0Unsubscribes won\u2019t hurt your chances of hitting people\u2019s inboxes in the future<\/b>. Spam reports can absolutely hurt those chances.<\/p>\n And half of people\u00a0say<\/a>\u00a0they\u2019ve flagged a marketing email as spam because of a \u201cconfusing or painful\u201d unsubscribe process.<\/p>\n When you make it easy for people to unsubscribe \u2014 as easy as marking as spam \u2014 it\u2019s a smart move for your future deliverability.<\/p>\n Probably not \u2014 unless you’re a bulk sender.<\/p>\n List-unsubscribe is best if you\u2019re sending promotional\/marketing emails.<\/b>\u00a0That includes things like sales announcements, product announcements, a company newsletter, and other for-profit marketing blasts.<\/p>\n Cold emails do not fall under that umbrella. Cold emails are (in their purest form) highly-targeted, highly-personalized outreach messages. While you may send them at scale using\u00a0mail merge<\/a>\u00a0(like, oh I don\u2019t know, a certain beloved cold email app), cold emails are not meant to resemble marketing emails.<\/p>\n Cold emails are (or feel like) one-on-one emails. List-unsubscribe feels less personal. If you want to give people the option to unsubscribe from your cold emails, that\u2019s up to you \u2014 but it\u00a0makes more sense to bake that option into your message<\/b>.<\/p>\n A sentence like, \u201cAnd if you don\u2019t want to get any more emails from me, click here and I\u2019ll take you off my list\u201d is more in line with cold email than a gaudy \u201cUnsubscribe!\u201d button at the top.<\/p>\n List-unsubscribe is also\u00a0not intended for people sending non-commercial campaigns<\/b>. Non-commercial emails operate under a different set of rules than commercial ones. You shouldn\u2019t worry about pushing a bold, high-visibility unsubscribe link to the top of your non-commercial messages.<\/p>\n Important note: If you’re a bulk sender (sending 5,000+ emails per day to gmail.com addresses or a similar volume to Yahoo\/AOL addresses), having a one-click list-unsubscribe header is a sender requirement<\/a> as of February 2024.<\/em><\/p>\n Time to dive into the simple process of setting up list-unsubscribe headers in your GMass account.<\/p>\n Head into your\u00a0GMass dashboard<\/a>. Open the Settings, then click into the Unsubscribes section. Look for the \u201cList-Unsubscribe Header\u201d box.<\/p>\n Check the box to turn on list-unsubscribe headers<\/b>, then click \u201cSave unsubscribes.\u201d<\/p>\n GMass will add both the mail-to and URL unsubscribe options in the header of your future emails, along with list-unsubscribe-post instructions for one-click unsubscribes.<\/p>\n That\u2019s it. It was a one-step process. I apologize if you were all set to make an afternoon out of it.<\/p>\n One: This is an\u00a0account-wide<\/i>\u00a0setting. Which means: If you turn it on,\u00a0you\u2019re turning it on for all campaigns<\/b>. You won\u2019t have a campaign-by-campaign option to toggle it on or off. If you want to turn it on and off, you\u2019ll have to do so here in the GMass dashboard.<\/p>\n And two: List-unsubscribe headers will only appear in your promotional and cold emails. They\u00a0will not appear in transactional emails<\/b>\u00a0you send through the\u00a0GMass API<\/a>\u00a0or using GMass\u2019s\u00a0transactional email SMTP relay<\/a>.<\/p>\n Send an email to yourself with GMass to see your list-unsubscribe headers in action.<\/p>\n You can view the original source of the email to see the headers.<\/p>\n In Gmail, open the email. Click the three-dot menu on the top right, then choose \u201cShow original.\u201d<\/p>\n Scroll down near the bottom of your email headers (before the message body begins). You should see the list-unsubscribe headers there.<\/p>\n You can also look for the list-unsubscribe headers in action. Here\u2019s that email in Apple Mail for desktop. You can see the unsubscribe button which Apple automatically added on top.<\/p>\n You may be wondering, \u201cHey guy, why did you show us the list-unsubscribe button in Apple Mail and not Gmail? And now that I think about it\u2026 the list-unsubscribe link didn\u2019t appear in that Gmail screenshot you used a few paragraphs earlier. Wazzup with that?\u201d<\/p>\n You\u2019re right to question me, and you\u2019re even right to question me using \u201890s slang. And that\u2019s because\u00a0Gmail is quirky (to say the least) about how it displays list-unsubscribe headers<\/b>.<\/p>\n In fact, we are yet to see one of our own list-unsubscribe headers appear in Gmail in our testing.<\/p>\n Google is opaque about why this might be. There are two operating theories.<\/p>\n According to a 2009\u00a0post<\/a>\u00a0on Google\u2019s official blog, \u201cyou\u2019ll only see the unsubscribe option for senders that we\u2019re pretty sure are not spammers and will actually honor your unsubscribe request. We\u2019re being pretty conservative about which senders to trust in the beginning; over time, we hope to offer the ability to unsubscribe from more email.\u201d<\/p>\n In other words, they don\u2019t want to give everyone the list-header unsubscribe link automatically \u2014 because\u00a0unscrupulous spammers wouldn\u2019t unsubscribe you<\/b>. Instead, your click on that link would signal your email address is real and active \u2014 meaning they\u2019d just dump even more spam on you.<\/p>\n But they wrote that 13 years ago, which is a lifetime in internet years. So we\u2019ve arrived at another, more likely theory.<\/p>\n Gmail doesn\u2019t fancy itself an email marketing platform, at least not natively. (Though that might be changing with the advent of\u00a0Gmail multi-send<\/a>, but that\u2019s a baby step.) That\u2019s why you use third-party options like GMass to run Gmail-based email campaigns.<\/p>\n So\u00a0our lead theory is Gmail ignores the list-unsubscribe headers in Gmail-to-Gmail emails<\/b>. Google doesn\u2019t have any documentation on the topic, but that\u00a0seems<\/i>\u00a0to be the case.<\/p>\n Our experiments validate this theory. We have a high sender reputation with our GMass email list \u2014 one that would certainly hit their threshold for a trustworthy sender who warrants a list-unsubscribe link.<\/p>\n However, even with that list, we don\u2019t get the unsubscribe link in our Gmail-to-Gmail emails.<\/p>\n Note: You\u00a0may<\/i>\u00a0see the link if you send GMass emails through an external SMTP server.<\/p>\n This means your list-unsubscribe headers may be ignored by Google on emails you send to people with Gmail or Google Workspace accounts.<\/p>\n That\u2019s not ideal, but it\u2019s the reality of sending Gmail-to-Gmail emails. Your best bet:\u00a0Make sure your traditional unsubscribe link at the end of your email is easy to spot<\/b>\u00a0(not light gray text). That way, at least some (or most) people who want off your list will click that link rather than reporting you as spam.<\/p>\n The list-unsubscribe header is another great way to improve both your unsubscribe management and<\/i>\u00a0deliverability with GMass.<\/p>\n If you aren\u2019t familiar with all of GMass\u2019s\u00a0unsubscribe management<\/a>\u00a0offerings, list-unsubscribe now joins these tools at your disposal:<\/p>\n List-unsubscribes also join our best-in-the-world suite of\u00a0deliverability tools<\/a>, including:<\/p>\n If you\u2019re already a GMass user and ready to roll, head to your\u00a0dashboard<\/a>\u00a0to turn on list-unsubscribes.<\/p>\nList-Unsubscribe Header: Table of Contents<\/h2>\n
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What Is the List-Unsubscribe Header?<\/h2>\n
How the list-unsubscribe links look in different email clients<\/h3>\n
![\"List-unsubscribe](\"https:\/\/www.gmass.co\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/listunsub-gmaildesktop-tinified.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"List-unsubscribe](\"https:\/\/www.gmass.co\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/listunsub-gmailmobile-tinified.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"List-unsubscribe](\"https:\/\/www.gmass.co\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/litsunsub-appledesktop-tinified.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"List-unsubscribe](\"https:\/\/www.gmass.co\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/listunsub-appleios-tinified.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"List-unsubscribe](\"https:\/\/www.gmass.co\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/listunsub-outlookdesktop-tinified.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"List-unsubscribe](\"https:\/\/www.gmass.co\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/listunsub-yahoodesktop-tinified.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"List](\"https:\/\/www.gmass.co\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/listunsub-yahoomobile2-tinified.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nThe two types of list-unsubscribe options<\/h3>\n
one-click<\/code>.<\/p>\nWait\u2026 You Want Me to Make It Way Easier for People to Unsubscribe? Really?<\/em><\/h2>\n
Reason #1: A clean, engaged list is better for business<\/h3>\n
Reason #2: Easy unsubscribe can help with deliverability<\/h3>\n
Should You Use List-Unsubscribe in Cold Emails?<\/h2>\n
How to Enable List-Unsubscribe Headers in GMass<\/h2>\n
Turn on list-unsubscribe in the GMass dashboard<\/h3>\n
![\"Enable](\"https:\/\/www.gmass.co\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/listunsub-settings-tinified.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nTwo important notes about list unsubscribes in GMass<\/h3>\n
Check to see if your emails have the list-unsubscribe headers<\/h3>\n
![\"Show](\"https:\/\/www.gmass.co\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/listunsub-showoriginal-tinified.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.gmass.co\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/listunsub-newheaders-tinified.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.gmass.co\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/listunsub-buttoninaction-tinified.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nThe weird Gmail quirk with list-unsubscribe headers<\/h3>\n
Theory 1: Google is judicious about who does and doesn\u2019t get the easy \u201cUnsubscribe\u201d link<\/h4>\n
Theory 2: Google doesn\u2019t display the unsubscribe link on Gmail-to-Gmail links<\/h4>\n
What this Google quirk means for you<\/h4>\n
List-unsubscribe headers in GMass: The newest tool in your unsubscribe management toolbox<\/h2>\n
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