What to Call Your Unsubscribe Link

Here’s a quandry. CAN-SPAM, best practices, and just being a good mailer all require that you have a working unsubscribe link.

But, many spam filters – including some widely deployed spam filters, consider words like “click here to unsubscribe” or “click here to stop receiving these maillings” to be an indicator that the email containing the phrase may be spam.

So what’s an email sender to do?

Well, what not to do is to play cute tricks trying to game the spam filters, like spelling words incorrectly, or using a “Click here to unsubscribe” graphic (although the latter is probably better than the former).

Far better is to include your unsubscribe link, and say what it does, being descriptive in a way that says what it is without falling back on “click here to unsubscribe.”

For example:

“Manage or cancel your newsletter subscriptions here.”

“Change or cancel your mailing subscriptions here.”

“Go here to be removed from our mailing list.”

You get the idea.

So, how is your unsubscribe link currently worded, and how might you change that now?