In this article, we’re going to show you how you can investigate an unsubscribe method for a contact and what best practices you can use to help you find this information.
A contact can be unsubscribed from a list in different ways. For example, they can be unsubscribed due to a bulk edit action, automation action, admin action, or they can click an unsubscribe link in your email.
View your unsubscribed contact
First, we recommend viewing the "List Status" modal on the contact’s record. If they clicked an unsubscribe link in your email, we will show the unsubscribe link click and, if provided, the unsubscribe reason. It will look something like this:
To view the "List Status" modal, go to the Contacts Overview page in your account and click on the contact you wish to view. Then, click the list name to open the status modal:
We will also display this information in the Contact’s activity stream:
If a contact was unsubscribed from a list via system unsubscribe (automation action, bulk edit, admin action), then you will see something like this instead:
Manual unsubscribe and Bulk edit:
Automation Unsubscribe:
Did the contact encounter any “Unsubscribe from list” actions in your automation(s)?
Review your automations and see if they contain any “Unsubscribe from list” actions. Next, verify if your contact has entered that automation and review their path to determine if they moved through the unsubscribe action.
Review your Unsubscribe report for your campaigns and automation emails
With every direct and automated email campaign you send, we will show all the contacts who clicked the unsubscribe link, the date and time of the unsubscribe and if provided the reason for their unsubscribe in the particular campaign.
To view the Unsubscribe report:
- Click Reports on the left menu.
- The All Campaigns Performance report will load. Click on the campaign you wish to view.
- The individual performance report for the selected campaign will open. Scroll down until you see “Unsubscribe reasons” and click the “Unsubscribes report” link.
Organize your unsubscribed contacts
Although unsubscribe methods are not listed as an Advanced Search or segment option, you can still use our Tags feature to manage unsubscribes by following some best practices. First, you need to plan which method makes the most sense for you, and how you wish to use these tags to organize this information.
Tag contacts when you use the bulk editor to unsubscribe them from lists
The bulk editor allows you to apply more than one action at a time to contacts. Click the “Add a tag” option in the bulk editor alongside your “Remove from a list” action to tag contacts.
That way, contacts are unsubscribed and tagged at the same time. You can then later use this tag to search for contacts who were unsubscribed by this method.
Add an “Add a tag” automation action before or after an “Unsubscribe from list” action.
By adding this tag action, you can easily search for contacts that were unsubscribed by an automation action. For an in-depth outline of how to bulk unsubscribe contacts who are not engaged via automation, see this article.
Add a tag to contacts when you manually unsubscribe them
You can manually add a tag to individual contacts as soon as you unsubscribe them from a list. Type the tag name into the “Tag” field on their contact profile page.
Use the “Link action” feature to tag contacts when they click the unsubscribe link in your email
To set this up, you will need to replace the default footer in each campaign and, automation email you create with your own footer. You can learn how to replace a default footer with your own footer here. That way, you can easily locate contacts in a search that clicked an unsubscribe link.