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ACES Email Lists - Advanced - Unsubscribe link in newsletter

Process for enabling the addition of an unsubscribe link on an ACES email list; most commonly used for newsletters.

This is an advanced process that requires special rights on the ACES email list service. Please ask your IT Pro for help if you would like this enabled on your email list.

  1. Attachment Type (footer_type) should be set to "append to message body (append)"
    • This setting is under Edit List Config / Sending/receiving setup
  2. Allow message personnalization (merge_feature) must be set to "enabled (on)"
    • This setting is under Edit List Config / Sending/receiving setup
  3. Who can unsubscribe (unsubscribe) cannot be set to "closed (closed)"
    • This setting is under Edit List Config / Priveleges
    • "need authentication (auth)" is the recommended option
    • If the owner(s) of the list should be notified when someone unsubscribes, choose "authentication requested, notification sent to owner (auth_notify)"
  4. Message Footer should be configured with the unsubscribe link:
    • This setting is under Customizing / Added in distributed messages / Edit - Message Footer
    • This code will become the custom unsubscribe URL: [% wwsympa_url %]/auto_signoff/[% listname %]/[% user.escaped_email %]
      • This code is valid for Sympa prior to Sympa 6.2 (Aug 2016)
      • https://www.sympa.org/manual_6.1/message-handling#unsubscription_url
    • Add the wording of your choice for instructing subscribers to click the link to unsubscribe
Future messages sent to a list with this configuration will have the footer appended with the unsubscribe link.

What will the subscriber experience?

  1. If a subscriber clicks on the unsubscribe link, it will take them to a page which informs them a confirmation was sent to their email.
  2. An email with a link similar to https://lists.aces.illinois.edu/lists/ticket/01010101010101 is sent to the subscriber's registered email
  3. If the subscriber clicks on the confirmation link, they are taken to a page which informs them "signoff: action completed"; their email is now removed from the list.


KeywordsSympa footer subscriber "email list" CANSPAM CAN-SPAM "CAN SPAM Act"   Doc ID76249
OwnerJoshua H.GroupAnswers @ ACES
Created2017-08-31 11:32:36Updated2022-03-10 08:50:37
SitesUniversity of Illinois - College of ACES
Feedback  6   7