Should I add an unsubscribe link?
Yes for bulk and marketing mail — it's required by law and by mailbox providers. MailBlastr campaigns auto-inject a per-contact link and a List-Unsubscribe header. Transactional opt-out is sender-driven.
For bulk and marketing email, yes — always. A clear unsubscribe link is required by anti-spam law (CAN-SPAM, CASL, GDPR) and effectively required by Gmail and Yahoo, which mandate one-click unsubscribe for bulk senders. Just as importantly, it's your best defense against spam complaints: a recipient who can't find the unsubscribe will hit *Report spam* instead, which hurts you far more.
Campaigns: handled for you
When you send a campaign, MailBlastr automatically adds both mechanisms to every copy:
- A per-contact unsubscribe link in the body. If your HTML already contains an unsubscribe link, MailBlastr leaves it alone; if it doesn't, a small footer with a working opt-out link is appended — so a campaign can never go out with no way to opt out.
- A `List-Unsubscribe` header with one-click support (RFC 8058
List-Unsubscribe-Post). This powers the native *Unsubscribe* button Gmail and Apple Mail show next to your name.
When a contact unsubscribes through either path, MailBlastr marks them unsubscribed and skips them on future sends. See Unsubscribed contacts.
Transactional email: sender-driven
Transactional messages sent with POST /emails (password resets, receipts, order confirmations) are not automatically given an unsubscribe footer — these are one-to-one operational mails the recipient expects, and a marketing-style unsubscribe is often inappropriate (you can't opt out of your own receipt).
That means opt-out for transactional mail is sender-driven: it's up to you to decide when an opt-out makes sense and to add your own link. If a recipient should be able to stop a given transactional stream, include your own unsubscribe link in the html body and record the resulting opt-out as a suppression so future sends to that address are skipped.
Rule of thumb
| Mail type | Unsubscribe link | Who handles it |
|---|---|---|
| Campaign / marketing | Required | MailBlastr (auto link + List-Unsubscribe header) |
Newsletter / bulk via POST /emails | Required | You — add a link and suppress opt-outs |
| Transactional (receipts, resets) | Optional / case-by-case | You (sender-driven) |