One-Click SES Unsubscribe Link

Question

Hello!

We use SES to send out large quantities of emails from our company to our user base. In order to allow our consumers to unsubscribe from receiving additional messages, we utilize SES's {{amazonSESUnsubscribeUrl}} placeholder within the HTML body of our messages (as documented here: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/ses/latest/dg/sending-email-subscription-management.html). The process to unsubscribe currently works like this: A recipient will click on the unsubscribe link in their email, get redirected to SES's pre-built Subscription preferences web page (located at {aws-region}.user-subscription.com), click the checkbox for "Unsubscribe from all", and then click the button "Update".

However, based on recent announcements from Gmail (see bullet point #2 in this article: https://blog.google/products/gmail/gmail-security-authentication-spam-protection/), bulk email senders to Gmail accounts are now required to make their unsubscribe process "one-click". This means after the user clicks on the unsubscribe link in the email, the SES Contact List should immediately update this email address as "unsubscribed from all", trigger the associated Subscription Record event (https://docs.aws.amazon.com/ses/latest/dg/event-publishing-retrieving-sns-examples.html#event-publishing-retrieving-sns-subscription), and not require the recipient to take any further action.

Is there a way to configure the {{amazonSESUnsubscribeUrl}} link to do this today? And if not, are there any plans to update this link so that email senders like us can comply with the new Gmail requirements?

Thank you!

Accepted Answer

I understand that you have a query related to managing subscription preferences through the Contact List. Using {{amazonSESUnsubscribeUrl}}, you require to know if it is possible to unsubscribe in one click.

To comply with Google's one click you will need to use the list unsubscribe headers and not use {{amazonSESUnsubscribeUrl}}

List-Unsubscribe
List-Unsubscribe-Post

More details about this solution can be found on below documents:

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/ses/latest/dg/sending-email-subscription-management.html#unsubscribe-header-considerations
https://support.google.com/mail/answer/81126

The reason is, the header above causes the link to be created in the message by the recipient mail client.

Recipients whose email client recognizes these headers will see the Unsubscribe link and will be able to unsubscribe via the link but will not have the option of choosing which topics they unsubscribe from, and will simply be unsubscribed from the topic to which the email was sent.

Further, in case you have more queries around this implementation you can always reply back to the Support case you are working on with our Premium Support Team-

https://support.console.aws.amazon.com/support/home?region=us-east-1#/case/history

Answer

To clarify, the messages should have both the unsubscribe footer and the headers. I would not recommend removing the unsubscribe link from the footer.

To comply with CAN-SPAM, make sure it is clearly visible so that recipients can find it just in case their email client does not support using the List-Unsubscribe-Post capability.

Note: it is acceptable for the link in the footer to take the recipient to a landing page to confirm their opt-out preferences.

Answer

Follow the guidelines from Google. As mentioned here, these requirements apply to bulk emails only, promotional or marketing related. It's not mandatory for transactional emails or low volume.

https://support.google.com/a/answer/14229414

https://support.google.com/a/answer/14289100

Signup for Google Postmaster Tools:
https://www.gmail.com/postmaster

Please also take a look at our recent Blog post on how to use One-Click-Unsubscribe in Amazon SES:
https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/messaging-and-targeting/using-one-click-unsubscribe-with-amazon-ses/

Answer

I am wondering what impact this would have on people being erroneously unsubscribed. I've been informed that bots read emails and click links to check them and this can result in inaccurate open rates and false unsubscribes. This seems to be an issue for self-hosted email services such as listmonk, sendy, etc., but I didn't notice it in newsletter services like mailchimp, convertkit, etc.

People using Amazon SES would generally be using one of these self-hosted mail services.

For example, with Sendy, I sent a campaign to myself and I was automatically unsubscribed without clicking anything myself. Their support said it was due to "one-click unsubscribe headers" and the solution was "Double opt-out".

Also, I'm seeing reports of the `list-unsubscribe` header being deprecated https://stackoverflow.com/questions/77619472/even-after-implementing-the-list-unsubscribe-header-the-unsubscribe-from-maili/77767610

One-Click SES Unsubscribe Link

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