When someone wants off of your list what do you do? Obviously, the answer to that question is “remove them.” Just as important of a consideration is “How do you go about doing that?”

Commercial email is an animal all to itself. If you have a falling out with your best friend, you just stop emailing them. But, there are legal strictures placed on commercial email thanks to the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003.

What does the law have to say about how you go about removing people from your list? It’s pretty simple, really. CAN-SPAM demands that:

1. You have a working unsubscription mechanism.
2. For every email you send that mechanism must remain functional for at least 30 days after the mail is sent.
3. You process remove requests promptly, defined as no later than ten (10) business days after the receipt of the request.

Outside of that there isn’t a whole lot of guidance out there. I did find one blog post this morning purporting to describe unsubscribe best practices. But, some of those “best practices” may not be best at all.

Consider this bit, for example:

First, offer them the option to reduce frequency on the first page of the unsubscribe process and include the option for them to supply feedback.

I would caution people to make certain to keep their unsubscribe processes at one page. It’s been a requirement of CAN-SPAM since 2008. It’s just fine (and I believe it to be a best practice) to have more options on that one page, like reducing frequency, but the requirement is for the process to not require visiting more than one page.

Send an email confirming the unsubscribe (denote this as part of the website language), be sure to include:

• Contact information for your organization’s customer service department (in case they have any problems)
• A re-subscribe link
• An Are you Sure Banner/ link that includes the available specials, rates, your sales outlet or unique promotion – you’ll be surprised at the number of people that unsubscribe and then visit the specials section.

If you are going to confirm someone as having left your list, and you really want to do the rest of this, then it needs to be low-key. The key to understanding whether something is transactional (which an unsubscription confirmation would be) or commercial is found in the term “primary purpose.” This term is one found in the statutory definition of “transactional or relationship message.”

The FTC determines primary purpose just like you would in any other context. They look at the totality of the email and consider from that content what the purpose of sending it was.

Yes, I know lots of people look to a so-called “20% Rule” to make this determination. And I’ve covered my objections to this in the past. But think of it this way: If someone takes you to lunch and spends an hour with chit-chat and then spends 5 minutes talking about something work related, what would you say was the primary purpose of the visit? Think they expensed that as a work-related lunch?

The upshot of this is that you need to make as certain as possible that everything about your unsubscribe confirmation email screams that it is just that: a confirmation that someone has unsubscribed. Otherwise, you can end up with the legal necessity to look extremely silly: Your re-engagement/marketing/unsubscription confirmation message would need its own unsubscription option.

Additionally, there’s this bit of advice:

If you can, copy a CSR on the confirmation email to the recipient. Offer the recipient the opportunity to mail you suggestions and (if the info is available) have the CSR follow up with the recipient that unsubscribed by phone. You never know what you’ll learn or if you can win them back.

In talking with one of the people in charge of things at a major ISP about this post it was pointed out to me:

I do block senders I find doing such stupid things. And if a CSR rep called me over an unsub it might just get that mailer my personal attention.

I’m sure you can tell that this level of “personal attention” is not what you really want when you’re mailing.

This all, of course, comes down to one simple point that I made in 2008: “Just because you read it on the Internet doesn’t make it so.”

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• When is transactional mail not transactional anymore? (spamtacular.com)
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