There are several options available for opting-out contacts.

By practicing good list hygiene, you increase the likelihood of successful delivery of your email. List hygiene involves processing unsubscribe requests and abuse complaints in a timely manner.

According to the CAN-SPAM Act, a law that sets the rules for commercial email, establishes requirements for commercial messages, and gives recipients the right to have you stop emailing them.

As a best practice, you should consider all of the following methods:

Clicking a link

The contact clicks on a link in an email. This could be a one click unsubscribe link or a web form.

Manually

Manually opt-out a contact from a list by locating that contact within a given list in Acoustic Campaign, then marking them as opted out. The opt-out is effective immediately. If Acoustic Campaign is in maintenance mode, the you cannot access Acoustic Campaign to perform this action.

List import

Import a list of contacts into an existing database, and indicate at the time of import that the contacts should be opted out of the database. The opt-out is effective upon completion of the associated data job. If Acoustic Campaign is in maintenance mode, you cannot access Acoustic Campaign to perform this action.

XML API call

If you use the Acoustic Campaign XML API product, there are two XML API calls that you can make to opt out contacts from a database: OptOut contact and ImportList with OPT_OUT action. If Acoustic Campaign is in maintenance mode, you cannot access Acoustic Campaign to perform this action, and the call should be tried again at a later time. The contact is not opted out until the XML API call is successfully received and processed.

Reply to email

A contact may request to be unsubscribed by replying to an email via their email client. If you are using the reply handling feature within Acoustic Campaign (meaning you sent your email using a reply handling domain associated with the organization), then Acoustic Campaign processes the opt-out automatically. If Acoustic Campaign is in maintenance mode, the reply is captured and processed after the system comes out of maintenance mode. If you are not using reply handling, the opt-out request goes directly to the reply to email address used in the sent email, and you are responsible for processing the request.

Opt-out web form

Create and customize opt-out web forms, so contacts who no longer want to subscribe to your emails are opted-out of your emails.

Like standard web forms, opt-out web forms can be placed in your email. When you create an opt-out form, a confirmation page is included. Viewers are directed to the confirmation page upon submission of the opt-out form.

List-unsubscribe

You can also use list-unsubscribe with domains that allow it. Acoustic Campaign supports list-unsubscribe. It is enabled by default.

Acoustic provides the list-unsubscribe header that's needed for the Gmail and Apple email client unsubscribe features to work. However, it's at the discretion of those ISPs to choose to display the unsubscribe link within the email client. Gmail only displays the unsubscribe link for senders with positive reputations. To ensure your link is displayed, work toward improving your sender reputation.

Postal mail

The recipient can send a letter through the postal service to a physical address that is monitored and can be used to unsubscribe from a list.

Global suppression list

Lastly, a contact may contact Acoustic Campaign directly, and request to be opted out of all emails from any Acoustic Campaign client. To accomplish this, they are added to a global suppression list. This suppression happens at send time when Acoustic Campaign is determining which contacts should receive a given email.

View opted-out contacts

Depending on the setup of your organization, one of two actions takes place when a recipient clicks an opt-out link or completes an opt-out form:

• The contacts are added to the master suppression list. Because they are opted in to this list, they are still listed as contacts in the database.
• The contacts are moved from the opt-in state (in the "Search" tab) to the opt-out state within the original database.

It is important to check both the master suppression list for the contacts (Search tab) and undeliverables views and the sending database contacts (Search tab). If you export the master suppression list contacts view, it displays the date that a contact was added and what database the contact was added from.

To find the opt-outs for the master suppression list, take the following steps:

1. Go to Data > Contact lists.
2. Click the Suppression lists tab.
3. Locate your master suppression list in either the private or share tab.
4. Click the name of the master suppression list.
5. Click the Search tab. This is where you can find the list of contacts and can sort by state.

To find the opt-outs for a database, take the following steps:

1. Go to Data > View data.
2. Click the name of the database.
3. Click the Search tab. This is where you can find the list of contacts and can sort by state.