Double Opt-in and Consent

Mailroom keeps a real record of permission: the sentence each person agreed to, when, from which address, whether they confirmed, and every change to their lists since. This page covers double opt-in, the consent record and the consent history, and the rule that keeps people who left from being put back.

Double opt-in

Double opt-in is a list setting, Ask people to confirm. The Ask People to Confirm setting on the Signup tab (double_opt_in, on) is only the default for new lists. The default Newsletter list asks.

When somebody signs up to a list that asks:

1. They are added as Waiting to confirm on that list, and campaigns leave them out.
2. Mailroom emails them "Please confirm your email address for {site name}" with one button, Yes, sign me up, and the line "If you did not sign up, ignore this email."
3. The button opens {route}/confirm/{token}. Pressing Yes, sign me up on that page confirms them: every list waiting on them is confirmed at once, and they land on "You are on the list".

If they never press it, nothing is sent to them. The link works for seven days; after that the page says "That link has expired" and asks them to sign up again.

Somebody already subscribed to another list who signs up to a list that asks gets the same confirmation email for that list, and stays waiting on it until they press it.

The confirmation email goes out straight after the signup's response (see Jobs and cron), and it waits on the queue while Mailroom has no site URL (see Getting started). Confirmation Emails (messages.confirmation) on the Sending tab switches them off; then nobody new can confirm.

The confirmation page

Mail scanners open every link in an inbox before the person does, so opening the link never confirms anybody by itself. Two settings on the Public Pages tab decide how the page behaves:

The page never presses its own button for somebody an admin invited or an import asked to confirm, because they never filled in a form themselves. It waits for their click.

Confirm somebody by hand

For somebody whose confirmation email went to spam and who has asked you, in writing, to be on the list: open their page and choose Confirm by hand. Only a person still waiting moves. The record says the site confirmed them, not the person.

The consent sentence

Consent Sentence (consent_text, on the Signup tab) is the wording beside the box to check on the signup box. The default:

I agree to receive email from this site. I can leave with one click at any time.

When somebody agrees, Mailroom stores a hash of the sentence against them, so you can later prove exactly what they said yes to. Changing the sentence changes what new people see and leaves everyone who already signed up alone.

With a sentence set, a signup must carry consent (the checked box, or "consent": true in JSON); without it the answer is "Please check the box to say you are happy to hear from us." Clearing the sentence says your site asks for no explicit consent: the box disappears and none is required.

A signup box can show and record its own wording: give mailroom_form() a consent_text and that sentence is the one stored for the people who sign up through it, carried back with the form and signed with the site's secret (see Lists and signup forms). A Form plugin form can record its own wording too: the mailroom action records consent_text when you give it, then the consent field's own label, then the site's sentence (see Lists and signup forms).

What is recorded

A subscriber's page shows, under Details:

The consent history

Every change to somebody's lists is one row in their consent history, kept for as long as they are, never edited, and erased with them. Their page shows it under Consent history, newest first (the newest eight, the rest behind "Show N earlier"). Each row reads as one sentence:

A person's own changes also record the address and browser they came from. The same history is in GET /mailroom/subscribers/{id} as consent_log and in their data export.

Leaving by their own hand

Somebody who left a list themselves has told you something no admin can overrule. Mailroom counts these as a person's own leaving:

• the unsubscribe link in an email (The link in an email),
• their mail client's unsubscribe button (Their mail client's unsubscribe button),
• the preference center (Preference center),
• a spam complaint (A spam complaint).

Nobody who left a list, or every list, that way is put back on it by an admin's add, Add to list, the bulk bar, a list's Add people, the list boxes on their page, an import, or an automation's Add to a list step. Each of those skips them and says why ("They left it themselves."). An admin who later unsubscribes or suppresses them does not change how they left.

The one way back is Put them back on, on their page, which needs a note saying how they asked ("How they asked": the email, call or conversation, and when). The note goes into their consent history. It is refused for an address that bounced, complained or is suppressed; remove the suppression first, as its own decision.

Somebody an admin took off, by contrast, can be added back by an admin.

Related

• Lists and signup forms
• Subscribers
• Unsubscribe and preferences
• Privacy