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Email consent

Get permission before you send, and keep the proof.

Consent means a person agreed to hear from you, and knows what they agreed to. It protects your reputation, and it is a legal requirement in many places (for example GDPR in the EU, CASL in Canada and national laws elsewhere). Sending to people who did not ask also leads to suspension: see Bounces and suppressions. This page is practical guidance, not legal advice.

Transactional or marketing?

  • Transactional mail is a direct result of something the person did: a receipt, a password reset, a shipping notice. It needs no separate opt-in, but must stay about that action.
  • Marketing mail promotes or informs: newsletters, offers, product announcements. It needs permission and an unsubscribe link.

Mixing promotion into a receipt makes it marketing. Keep the types apart, ideally on separate subdomains.

  1. Explicit. A checkbox that is not pre-ticked, or a form whose only purpose is to subscribe.
  2. Specific. Say what they will get and how often: "Weekly product tips from Acme".
  3. Confirmed. Send a confirmation email with a link; subscribe only when it is clicked. This keeps typos and malicious sign-ups off your list.
  4. Recorded. Keep the time, the form, the address and the text they agreed to. With usend you can store this in contact properties, for example consent_source and consent_at.
  5. Reversible. One click to leave, honored immediately: Unsubscribe links.

A confirmation email with usend

Send the confirmation as a normal transactional email, and add the contact only after the click:

Shell
curl -X POST https://api.usend.et/emails \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $USEND_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "from": "Acme <[email protected]>",
    "to": ["[email protected]"],
    "subject": "Confirm your subscription",
    "html": "<p><a href=\"https://acme.com/confirm?token=...\">Yes, subscribe me</a></p>"
  }'

Your server handles /confirm, checks the token, then calls POST /contacts.

Do not

  • Pre-tick boxes, hide consent inside terms of service, or tie sign-up to unrelated things.
  • Import people who gave their address for another purpose.
  • Re-subscribe someone who unsubscribed because of a data migration.

Why it matters for delivery

People who asked for your mail open it and rarely complain; people who did not, complain. Complaints are the strongest negative signal providers have: see Why emails go to spam.