Recipients can opt out of your text messages, and your campaigns should tell them how. This guide covers the opt-out method you choose when building a campaign, what happens when someone opts out, where to see it, and how to put someone back on.
What you can do
- Choose how recipients can opt out of a campaign.
- See at a glance whether a Contact's number is unsubscribed.
- Re-subscribe a number that has opted out.
- Identify opted-out recipients in your campaign results.
Choosing an opt-out method for a campaign
Every campaign has an Unsubscribe section on the Compose step of the Bulk SMS Sender, with three choices:
- Create a custom message (recommended) — write your own opt-out wording, which is appended to the message.
- Recipients can reply UNSUB to opt-out — gives recipients the standard UNSUB reply option.
- No unsubscribe option (not recommended).
The opt-out wording counts towards the length of the message, so check the Message preview card to see the final character count and SMS units.
What happens when someone replies UNSUB
A reply of UNSUB unsubscribes the mobile number from text messages. Two things change:
- The messages icon beside that number on the Contact's business card changes to show the number is unsubscribed.
- A System post is added to the Contact's Feed, tagged #text-message-unsubscribe, recording that the number opted out.
Because opt-outs are held against the number rather than the Contact, any Contact sharing that number is affected.
Checking whether a number is unsubscribed
- Open the Contact's profile.
- Look at the small messages icon beside their mobile number on the business card.
- The icon is green where the number can receive text messages, and red where the number has unsubscribed.
Colour is currently the only difference between the two states of this icon — it carries no label to distinguish them. If you are unsure which state you are looking at, select the icon: if the number is unsubscribed you will be asked whether you want to enable SMS marketing for it, and you can cancel out of that safely.
Re-subscribing a number
- Open the Contact's profile.
- Select the messages icon beside their mobile number.
- When asked "Are you sure you want to enable SMS marketing for this number?", select Confirm. Select Cancel to leave it unsubscribed.
Only re-subscribe a number where the person has asked you to. An opt-out is a request from the recipient, and reversing it without their say-so undermines the opt-out and may put you offside with spam rules.
Selecting the icon on a number that is currently subscribed unsubscribes it immediately, with no confirmation. Only the re-subscribe direction asks you to confirm, so take care where you click.
Opt-outs in campaign results
When you review a sent campaign's results, recipients whose number is unsubscribed show a status of Blocked rather than Sent (see Text campaign results). Blocked also covers other delivery failures, such as an invalid mobile number, so it is not exclusively an opt-out.
How this differs from Contact Restrictions
A text message opt-out is not the same thing as a contact restriction, and the two are managed in different places:
- A text message opt-out applies to a mobile number, is usually set by the recipient replying UNSUB, and is shown by the messages icon on the business card.
- A contact restriction is set by your team on the Contact's Contact Restrictions tab. It carries a restriction type and a reason, and can switch off whole channels — including Bulk SMS campaigns — for that Contact. Setting a restriction type and reason overrides the individual channel settings and blocks every channel.
A Contact can be subject to one, both, or neither. If a Contact is not receiving your messages and the messages icon looks fine, check the Contact Restrictions tab as well.
Context and relationships
- Opt-outs apply to the mobile number, so they carry across campaigns and individual messages alike.
- Recipients cannot reply to a message sent from a custom sender name, so the UNSUB reply option does not work for those sends (see Text message numbers & sender IDs).
- Blocked recipients still appear in the exported results CSV, so you can audit who did not receive a campaign.
FAQs
What word do recipients reply with to opt out?
UNSUB, where you have chosen that opt-out method for the campaign.
Does an opt-out apply to the Contact or the number?
The number. Any Contact recorded with that number is affected.
Where can I see that someone has opted out?
The messages icon beside their mobile number on the business card, and a System post tagged #text-message-unsubscribe in the Contact's Feed.
Can I opt someone back in?
Yes — select the messages icon and confirm. Only do this where the person has asked to be re-subscribed.
Does an opt-out stop individual text messages too?
The opt-out is recorded against the number and shown on the profile. To block a Contact from bulk campaigns outright, use the Bulk SMS campaigns channel on their Contact Restrictions tab.
Why does a recipient show as Blocked in my campaign results?
Usually because the number is unsubscribed, but Blocked also covers errors such as an invalid mobile number.
Is an opt-out recorded in the audit log?
It appears as a System post on the Contact's Feed rather than as a field change in the audit log.