What’s the difference between good and bad unsubscribe placement?

Good unsubscribe placement makes opting out easy and obvious-a clear link in the footer, visible without scrolling or hunting, leading to a one-click process. Good placement respects the recipient's choice and recognizes a truth: someone who wants to leave will leave. Either they'll unsubscribe cleanly, or they'll mark you as spam. One of those outcomes is dramatically worse for your sender reputation.

Bad unsubscribe placement hides, obscures, or complicates the process. Tiny text in low-contrast colors, requiring login to manage preferences, multiple confirmation pages, or links that don't work-all of these frustrate users into the spam button. Some senders deliberately hide unsubscribe links thinking they'll retain subscribers; in reality, they're trading unsubscribes for spam complaints, which tank deliverability for everyone remaining on the list.

Beyond ethics and reputation, regulations require prominent unsubscribe options. CAN-SPAM, GDPR, CASL, and similar laws mandate clear opt-out mechanisms. Gmail and Yahoo now require one-click unsubscribe headers for bulk senders. Fighting unsubscribes is fighting reality, and losing. A visible, easy unsubscribe link is a confidence signal: you trust your content enough that you don't need to trap people into staying.