# Set up opt-out and unsubscribe

> Pick the text or link opt-out for a mailbox, wrap the clickable words in curly brackets so the link is really built, and switch on the List-Unsubscribe header.

**Open the mailbox in Settings under Email Accounts and choose one of the two options on its Opt-out tab, Unsubscribe via text or Unsubscribe via link. The link is built only from words you wrap in curly brackets, so a footer without brackets goes out as an ordinary line of text with nothing to click. The List-Unsubscribe header is a sequence setting rather than a mailbox one, and Reply publishes it as a mailto address.**

_Status: Reviewed – written against Reply's product documentation on 2026-09-22, not yet confirmed against the running product._

## Goal

Every message from an [email account](/specifications/email-accounts/) offers recipients a
working way out (a sentence they can answer, or words they can click) and, where you want
it, the header some mail clients read to build their own unsubscribe control.

## Preconditions

- A connected mailbox – see [Connect a mailbox](/how-to/connect-a-mailbox/).
- The right to manage team settings. Members without it can open the Opt-out tab and read
 it, but the save control stays disabled with an explanatory tooltip; see
 [permissions](/reference/permissions/).
- A sequence you can edit, for the header part.

## Steps

1. Open **Settings**, go to **Email Accounts**, click the mailbox, and open its **Opt-out** tab. The tab carries one two-way switch (**Unsubscribe via text** and **Unsubscribe via link**) and the highlighted option is the one recipients receive. Each option stores its own wording, so moving between them leaves the other one's text intact.
2. Under **Unsubscribe via text**, write the line appended to the bottom of your emails. A newly connected mailbox arrives with a short PS inviting the recipient to say if they would rather not hear from you. Anyone who answers it is filed under **Do Not Contact** in the inbox and marked **Opted Out**, and nothing more is sent to them until a teammate clears that status.
3. Under **Unsubscribe via link**, put curly brackets around the words you want turned into the link. A new mailbox ships with `Want to opt out? Please {click here}`, where the brackets are what make *click here* clickable. Reply builds the hyperlink out of the bracketed words and nothing else, so a footer written without brackets still reaches the recipient: as a plain sentence, with no link in it. Use one bracketed phrase per footer and keep a closing parenthesis outside the brackets; either departure leaves you with plain text.
4. Fill in the message shown on the page the recipient lands on after clicking. A new mailbox uses `You now have been removed from my contact list.`: rewrite it if you want to confirm anything else, such as how long removal takes to propagate to your CRM.
5. To carry no opt-out from this mailbox at all, clear the fields and save. Nothing is appended once they are blank, which also means the responsibility for offering an unsubscribe route moves entirely to you; the bracketed default that arrives with a new mailbox already satisfies CAN-SPAM, so this is a deliberate step away from that.
6. To place the link inside the body rather than in the footer, edit the sequence step, select the words, insert a hyperlink and set its address to `{opt-out}`. The spelling has to match exactly (an extra space or a missing hyphen leaves the placeholder sitting in the delivered message) and only the first such link in a message is converted, so use it once per step.
7. For the header, open the sequence, go to its **Settings** tab, and turn on **Enable List-Unsubscribe header for all emails from this sequence** under **General**. It applies to every mailbox sending that sequence rather than to one mailbox, and it has to be switched on again for each sequence you want it in.

> Reply publishes that header as a mailto address: the Reply-to address of the sending
> mailbox, falling back to the sender address. Mail clients that require an HTTPS endpoint
> before they show a true one-click unsubscribe button will not show one, so do not rely on
> this switch alone for bulk-sender programs at the large mailbox providers.

## Expected result

Emails leaving this mailbox end with the footer in a block of its own below your signature.
In the link variant the bracketed words arrive underlined and clickable and lead to your
landing message; in the text variant the sentence arrives exactly as you typed it.

## Verification

Both specifications state that test emails and emails sent straight from a contact's profile
carry no opt-out block, so confirm this with a real sequence send instead: enroll an address
you control in a live sequence, let the first step go out, and open what arrives. Click the
link and check you see your landing text. If you enabled the header, view the raw source of
the delivered message and look for a List-Unsubscribe line holding a mailto address.

## What happens next

A recipient who opts out is marked **Opted Out** and stops receiving from every sequence,
not only the one that reached them. See
[A contact was blocked or opted out](/troubleshooting/contact-was-blocked-or-opted-out/).
Replies asking to stop arrive in the **Do Not Contact** category of the inbox, where they
are handled alongside your other replies; see [Process replies](/how-to/process-replies/).

## Common mistakes

- Rewriting the footer and dropping the curly brackets with it; the new wording is delivered, with nothing clickable in it.
- Writing a parenthetical inside the brackets, such as `{click here (opt out)}`; no link is produced and the whole line arrives as plain text.
- Bracketing two separate phrases in one footer; they are read as a single span and collapse into one link with a mangled label.
- Expecting the link variant in plain-text sending mode; plain-text sends always use the text footer, whichever tab is highlighted.
- Reading the header switch as one-click compliance at Gmail or Yahoo: what goes out is a mailto address.

## Related

- [Email accounts](/specifications/email-accounts/)
- [Sequence steps](/specifications/sequence-steps/) · [Templates and variables](/specifications/templates-and-variables/)
- [A contact was blocked or opted out](/troubleshooting/contact-was-blocked-or-opted-out/)
- [Manage your mailboxes](/how-to/manage-your-mailboxes/)

## Build with Reply

- REST API: [docs.reply.io](https://docs.reply.io/api-reference/introduction) – opt out contacts in bulk without touching the inbox