An unsubscribe link in every cold email you send

What a store owner sees

A small unsubscribe line at the foot of the email. The link is signed, so it only works for the person it was sent to. Where the mailbox allows it, the email also carries a one-click unsubscribe header, which is the "Unsubscribe" button Gmail and other providers show beside the sender's name.

It goes on the first email and every follow-up, from every sending mailbox. It also goes on follow-ups from Flow to a store contact who has never replied to you.

What happens when someone unsubscribes

• The address goes on your do-not-contact list straight away.
• Every email not yet sent to it, in every one of your campaigns, is stopped.
• Every later campaign checks the list before anything is scheduled.
• It stays on the list, where you can see it.

When a store replies "please stop"

Plenty of people reply instead of clicking. Any reply stops the sequence for that store, and a reply that asks you to stop is marked as an opt-out so you can see it for what it is in your replies. In Flow, an opt-out stops every plan for that contact and adds them to your do-not-contact list.

Once a store has replied, the thread is a conversation. Your answers from the inbox carry no unsubscribe line, because you are writing to someone who wrote to you.

Why an easy way out helps you

A store owner who cannot find a way to stop your emails has one button left: Report spam. A spam report does far more harm to your sending domain than an unsubscribe, and enough of them will push your next emails into junk for everyone.

An unsubscribe costs you one store that was never going to buy. Keep the link easy to find and you keep the rest of your outreach healthy.

Your do-not-contact list

The list covers your whole account, not one campaign. Add addresses one at a time, upload a CSV, or block a whole domain, so nobody at an existing stockist hears from a cold campaign. It is private to your brand and never shared.

Nobody gets two pitches

Across your own campaigns, a contact is held back when a campaign launches if any of these is true: another of your campaigns emailed them in the last 30 days, already has them queued, heard back from them, or saw a bounce, or they unsubscribed. Email bounces are blocked for good.

Rules differ by country

The rules on cold email depend on where you sell and who you write to, and we cannot give legal advice. What we can do is make the basics automatic: an honest sender name, a working unsubscribe on every cold email, and a list that is respected every time. Many brands also put a business address in their signature. Check what applies in your market before your first campaign.

The other parts of sending safely are your SPF, DKIM, DMARC records and a slow warmup. Before any of it, you can see who would stock you with nothing sent.