Unsubscribe link in automation emails takes them off ALL lists

Thanks for the reply. The single billing is definitely a plus, we we’re paying for 4-5 subscribers for the same person with mail chimp.

I am going to try to add an action link like that, but I know that gmail as well as many more email providers are adding unsubscribe links right at the top next to the email address.

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iPhones also have a prominent unsubscribed bar at the top of all emails in the mail app…

I have thought of another way to “fix” this… although I think it might be frowned upon if not a violation…

I could add an action to the actual unsubscribe button that triggers an automation that resubscribes a person to other lists based on tags or something.

I’m hesitant to do this because:

  1. I know that there will be errors and people may get resubscribed to a list they actually unsubscribed from.
  2. I’m pretty sure something like this will get me in trouble with ActiveCampaign.

Thoughts?

So I have been playing with campaigns and it seems I can do a date based campaign and trigger off of x days after a subscribe date.

Pro: Basically just like sending an email via an automation except now should be associated with a list if they choose to unsubscribe.

Con: Will have to have a separate campaign for every email to send. Lose the visual and this then that layout of the automation.

But a good fix that can work now until/if ActiveCampaign adds the ability to associate a list to an email.

And in case anyone at ActiveCampaign is reading this… super simple fix if you could replicate the list section page in campaign creation in automation campaign creation…

Hi all, In another discussion regarding how to make sure contacts that hit the unsubscribe link will still be able to recieve product updates or anything else they would want is explained in a webinar: Unsubscribes
It gives you a nice work-around.

Thanks for this @diyarchitecten. I just went through this webinar.

The basic idea is that you have multiple lists and when they click unsubscribe in an automation email (which effectively unsubscribes them from all lists) they get redirected to a page where they can have a chance to re-subscribe to any lists they want.

This is not a great solution.

  1. You have to break up your contacts into multiple lists. For people that work do not work with multiple lists (and instead use tags to segment) this will not work.
  2. You’re hoping that after they click unsubscribe and get redirected to another page they will then click again to re-subscribe to the appropraite list. But as we all know 90% of customers will not do that. They will just click unsubscribe and be gone forever.
  3. If by some chance they do re-subscribe you have to hope they re-subscribe to the correct lists. Most of the time they don’t know which lists are important and which are not. As sad as it is you can’t rely on customers to do the right thing even if it’s to their benefit.

We still need a solution that allows us to choose which list the automation is sent from, and therefore which list they are unsubscribed from.

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I had this same problem, and got taught this workaround. Now folk simply get removed from a sublist tag instead of all lists.

See: Updating subscriptions

I did create a Wordpress plugin that helps solves this issue with having users be able to manage their email preference center directly from your website. If you are interested you can take a look at https://wordpress.org/plugins/pramadillo-activecampaign-email-preference-center/

It surprised me too that there isn’t a more elegant way (“built in”) for subscribers to self-select which types of emails they want to opt out from, without opting out of everything.

So created a custom form on my site, which syncs the person’s list preferences back to ActiveCampaign. I integrated the form on my site (Gravity Forms), Zapier and an ActiveCampaign automation to do this.

I made this video demonstrating the entire set up here:
https://automationguides.co/activecampaign-manage-subscriptions-page/

I hope that helps!

Hi, is this big issue has been solved since 2017 ?
It’s a real problem that we cannot specify the name of the list in the unsubscribe link.

Thanks.

JC

Yes, wondering the same thing… may move away from AC if this isn’t resolved.

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experiencing with this issue…

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Wow, what a disappointment. It’s been more than 3 years since this thread was started, and I think I’ve submitted an idea/request to solve this 4 or 5 years ago and there’s still no real solution.

  1. Automations are still not connected to lists (unless the automation starts with “subscribed to list” trigger), so unsubscriptions still wrongly remove a contact from all lists.
  2. There is still no good way for subscribers to remove themselves from automations, especially in a day when browser privacy features break AC’s website tracking. (In other words, “visited page” is not reliable or effective.)

AC says they are driven by community-requested features, and this has been requested for years, but it still hasn’t been fixed.

Knowing how badly this operates demotivates me from creating marketing automations. I’d rather not be demotivated by ActiveCampaign.

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I’m new to ActiveCampaign, and I’m shocked that this is still an issue. I love the automations but learning that if someone unsubscribes from an automated email will unsubscribe them from ALL the lists they’re on kind of defeats the points of having automations.

From what I’ve read there are workarounds but it’s mad there’s no easy way to bypass this… We’re in 2020 man!

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Indeed… we’ve been using ActiveCampaign for about a year now, but now we’re getting to a point that this feature is really a big con to us. How is it possible that this is still an issue? This lack of this feature makes us think about switching to Converkit, since it is possible on their platform.

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Are any of you currently using the solution with two unsunscribe links in your automation e-mails? One link where contacts can stop the current automation, and another link where they can unsubscribe with the %UNSUBSCRIBELINK%.

Do you get any comments from your contacts? Are they happy about this solution?

I’m also currious to hear if there is another solution to this problem - hence this threat was started in 2017.
Do any of you use another solution to make it possible for you contacts to unsubscribe only one list - and not ALL lists - when unsubsribing from an automation email?

@Brian I would also love to hear from you. Do you still recommend the solution from Aug17?

Thank you in advance :slight_smile:

any update here?
I am not sure if the issues i am experiencing is connected to this. Is this still an issue or has it been resolved?

“automation unsubscribe management” Update in the making?

End of October 2023, AC emailed about these updates: https://www.activecampaign.com/blog/automation-usability-improvements

Including a “Coming Soon” for “automation unsubscribe management”

Has anyone seen any news about when this may go live, or whether it is already live?

Hi @getfundinghow ,
As far as I know this is not live yet, and there is no release date for it that I am aware of either, but I am hoping for Q1 of this year.

Giles
Zephi Limited

@theDanielJLewis We have created an integration to ActiveCampaign solving the exact problem you are speaking about.

You can either access us from the “Apps” section on ActiveCampaign or from our website emailpref.com