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Unsubscribe links

You must let people opt out of receiving subscription emails.

If you do not, recipients can report your emails as spam. If this happens we may stop you from using GOV.UK Notify.

Transactional emails do not need to include an unsubscribe link.

The GOV.​UK Service Manual explains the difference between transactional and subscription messages.

There are 2 ways to let recipients opt out:

  1. Add an unsubscribe link to the body of your email.
  2. Add one-click unsubscribe to the email header.

Add an unsubscribe link to the email body

GOV.UK Notify uses Markdown to format links.

To add an unsubscribe link to the body of your email, use square brackets around the link text and round brackets around the URL. Make sure there are no spaces between the brackets or the link will not work.

Use this example if you have a webpage for users to manage their email subscriptions:

[Unsubscribe](https://www.example.gov.uk/unsubscribe)

If you do not have your own webpage, you can add a ‘mailto’ link to let users send an email to your team instead. For example:

[Unsubscribe](mailto:example@gov.uk?subject=unsubscribe)

The email address should be a shared inbox managed by your team, not your own email address.

Add one-click unsubscribe to the email header

This is currently an API-only feature. You’ll need a developer on your team to set it up for you.

To add one-click unsubscribe, follow the instructions in our API documentation.