What happens if someone re-subscribes after opting out?

When someone who previously unsubscribed actively re-subscribes through a legitimate opt-in process, their new consent supersedes their prior opt-out. The re-subscription represents a fresh, affirmative decision to receive your communications, which creates new consent that overrides the previous withdrawal. This is legally and practically valid-people change their minds, circumstances evolve, and allowing re-subscription respects subscriber autonomy. Your system should record this new consent event with its own timestamp and source, creating a clear audit trail showing the progression from subscribe to unsubscribe to re-subscribe.

However, the re-subscription must be genuinely voluntary and initiated by the subscriber. You cannot re-add someone to your list just because you obtained their email address again from a third party, because they made a purchase, or because you believe they might want to hear from you again. The re-subscription must come through an explicit opt-in action-signing up through your website, checking a subscription box on a form, or otherwise clearly indicating they want back on your list. Importing addresses from external sources or assuming re-consent based on business relationships is not valid re-subscription.

From an implementation standpoint, when a re-subscription occurs, your system should remove the address from the active suppression list (or mark it as suppression-overridden by new consent) and record the new subscription event. Maintain the historical record showing the original subscription, the unsubscribe, and the re-subscription for compliance purposes. Some ESPs require manual confirmation to re-activate previously suppressed addresses, which provides an additional safeguard against accidental re-enabling. Re-subscription is valid when the subscriber genuinely chooses to come back-not when you find excuses to invite them without their explicit consent.