Inability to add unsubscribed customers to different list

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1

Hi all,

Lately we’ve discovered we are unable to send contacts that’re unsubscribed from all lists any campaigns via automations. But since ‘unsubscribe’ ubsubscribes customers from all lists automatically this is a huge issue.

For example (1): we have a client in our online learning platform that offers yearly subscriptions. They unsubscribe from the newsletter but since they are automatically unsubscribed from everything they will also no longer be sent any crucial information on their subscription, when it’s coming to an end or updates on new courses available to them.

For example (2): Someone unsubscribes from our newsletter. Two weeks later we put out a report on customer experience that we send people with an automation. Since this user unsubscribed from the newsletter they will no longer get the e-mail containing the download link. Frustrating.

Now i tried to build a workaround with an automation that triggers when someone unsubscribes, that automatically adds them to a new list called ‘unsubscribers’ so we’d have them still bundled in a list, but they’d get no e-mails except ones they explicitly asked for. Now i noticed we can’t even add them to a list anymore once they’ve unsubscribed.

I’ve read about workarounds using a form with tags so customers can indicate what they want to receive and whatnot but on some major e-mail clients the unsubscribe is still automatically displayed on top of the e-mail which means this is not a catch-all solution. Could this be solved by sending a webhook with all the contacts info, deleting the contact and then using the webhook to create a new contact in a new ‘unsubscribed’ contacts list? Or does anyone have any other workarounds? This seems to be a major flaw in Active Campaign.

Thanks in advance for any help here.

Cheers!

2

Hey there!

It’s expected that unsubscribed contacts cannot be manually added to other lists via automation or manually by an account user. This is an anti-spammer measure in place — you can find more info on how unsubscribes in automations work here.

When a contact unsubscribes themselves, they will need to opt back in via ActiveCampaign form. When a contact has unsubscribed, they will not receive any campaigns or automation emails sent to them.

It’s also important to note that when contacts click the unsubscribe link in a campaign, this will unsubscribe that contact from all lists the campaign was sent to.

A solution here would be to use tags to organize contacts, rather than lists. You can find more information on using tags to organize contacts here.

You can also set up a subscription preference form — more info on how to do that here. I hope this helps! :slight_smile: