Understand email unsubscribes and SMS and WhatsApp consent

Every contact carries three permissions: whether they have unsubscribed from email, whether they have agreed to texts, and whether they have agreed to WhatsApp messages. The app records these from what people do, and leaves people out of bulk sends automatically.

Before you start

• Make sure your forms that collect phone numbers are published on your own site. The consent box is added to them for you.

Steps

See the totals

1. Open Contacts, press the ··· menu at the top right and choose Contact settings.
2. Read Email unsubscribes, SMS consent granted and WhatsApp consent granted.

How email unsubscribes work

1. Every bulk email carries an unsubscribe link. When a person uses it, they are marked as unsubscribed.
2. Unsubscribed contacts are left out of bulk emails and campaigns before anything is sent or charged. The send window shows them under Filtered out (no email or unsubscribed).
3. Addresses that bounced or where the person marked your email as spam are also held back from marketing email.
4. A workflow can unsubscribe someone with the Unsubscribe them step.

How SMS consent works

1. Any form on your pages that asks for a phone number shows an unticked box with the consent wording: that the person agrees to receive texts from your business, that rates may apply, and that they can reply STOP to opt out or HELP for help.
2. When someone submits the form from your own site with a phone number and the box ticked, their SMS consent becomes granted. The wording they saw, the page and the submission are kept as proof.
3. When someone texts STOP (or UNSUBSCRIBE, CANCEL, END or QUIT) as the whole message, their consent becomes revoked and they get an automatic confirmation. Texting START, UNSTOP or YES gives consent again. HELP or INFO gets your business's help reply.
4. A later form tick does not undo a STOP. Only the person texting START does.

How WhatsApp consent works

1. Bulk WhatsApp messages only go to contacts whose WhatsApp consent is granted. "Unknown" is not enough.
2. A STOP sent on WhatsApp or by text stops both texts and WhatsApp messages to that person.

What happens next

• Bulk texts leave out people with no phone number and people who opted out. Before sending you must tick the box confirming everyone on the list agreed to hear from you by text, that you contacted them within the last year, and that the list is not from a third party.
• Every text is checked again as it goes. Somebody who opts out halfway through a send is not texted.
• Consent is set by what people do. It can't be typed in on the contact's record.

Troubleshooting

A bulk WhatsApp send says "Final 0". Only contacts whose WhatsApp consent is granted are counted, and the send window says how many that is. People who have never agreed are left out.

"This contact opted out of texts." The person texted STOP. You can't text or WhatsApp them until they text START to your number.

My SMS consent granted count is zero although people ticked the box. Consent is only recorded when the form was sent from your own published site and included a phone number. Test submissions from the editor, or from a page on another site, don't count.

Someone says they unsubscribed but still got an email. Booking confirmations, order receipts and one-to-one replies are service messages, not marketing, and still go out. Marketing email to them stops.

A contact texted "Stop please" and wasn't opted out. The keyword must be the whole message. Check the thread in Conversations; if they clearly want to stop, archive them or leave them out of your text sends.

Related

• Opt-outs (STOP) and texting compliance settings
• Send a text to a list
• Change, message or export many contacts at once
• Archive, delete or erase a contact