What is two-click confirmed unsubscribe?
What is two-click confirmed unsubscribe
When the user clicks on the unsubscribe link in your email they are taken to a page where they need to confirm their unsubscription (opt-out) by clicking on the provided button. This is also known as confirmed unsubscribe, 2-step unsubscribe, or double opt-out.
After unsubscribing, depending on what you've set in the "When someone unsubscribes" setting of your project (under Emails > Unsubscribe Settings) the user is either shown an optional feedback page where they're asked why they unsubscribed, or your own custom unsubscribe confirmation page.
How to enable/disable it
Two-click confirmed unsubscribe is the default unsubscribe setting for every project you create.
To enable or disable two-click confirmed unsubscribe, just navigate to Emails > Unsubscribe Settings, and under Unsubscribe confirmation select between Two-click confirmed unsubscribe or Single-click unsubscribe and Save your changes.
Why it is needed
Every non-transactional, marketing email sent through Prefinery, as with other companies, is required by law to include an unsubscribe link.
With that and as part of email best practice, a List-unsubscribe header is included in each email sent which contains the unsubscribe link unique for each recipient and is used by email clients like Gmail to display a native 'Unsubscribe' link at the top of the message if they choose to. The unsubscribe link points to the unsubscribe URL found in the List-unsubscribe header.
Some ISPs, mailbox services or mail servers though have anti-spam/phishing software or feature that use this header data to automatically unsubscribe a user when they think the email is spam or of least importance, even before the email reaches the recipient. This means legitimate emails can be falsely flagged as spam/phishing despite email best practices resulting into automatically unsubscribing the user from the emails even when the user themselves didn't want to. Hotmail, Outlook and Live are notable for this as an example.
This behavior often times is out of the user's control, but can be resolved by using two-click confirmed unsubscribe.
What happens when it's turned off
When you disable two-click confirmed unsubscribe, the unsubscribe behavior becomes single-click.
This simply means that if the user clicks on the unsubscribe link in the email, they are instantly unsubscribed - no other button to click. This also means that automated email software actions can unsubscribe the user from the email whether the user wanted to do so or not.