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Subscribers, consent & unsubscribes

Every marketing email respects consent automatically. You never filter an audience by hand to stay compliant: pick any audience — all customers, a segment, a manual list — and at send time Sellerlane delivers only to contacts who are subscribed and not suppressed. This page explains where consent comes from, how people opt out, and what the suppression list does behind the scenes.

Consent is tracked per contact value — the email address itself — not per customer profile. If a customer has two email addresses on file, each one carries its own subscription status, and an email sends only to addresses that opted in. This matters when profiles are merged or share contact points: consent follows the address, so a merge never accidentally subscribes an address that never opted in.

Each address is in one of four states:

StateMeaning
SubscribedOpted in — eligible for marketing email.
Not subscribedNo consent record yet (the default for every new contact).
PendingSigned up while double opt-in is on; awaiting confirmation.
UnsubscribedOpted out — never receives marketing email again.

The current status is shown on the customer profile’s Overview tab under Marketing, and audience reach previews on the Emails tab split every audience into eligible, not subscribed, and suppressed so you can see enforcement before you send.

Contacts become subscribers through three doors:

  • Checkout opt-in — the marketing checkbox at checkout. Buyers who tick it are subscribed (or set to Pending when double opt-in is on).
  • Storefront forms — the newsletter signup form on your theme. Same rules: subscribed immediately, or Pending behind double opt-in.
  • Admin edit — you can record consent on a customer profile, but you record it, you don’t grant it. Setting a contact to Subscribed asks you to confirm the customer actually gave consent — for example in person, on paper, or over the phone. See Customers & segments.

Double opt-in

Double opt-in adds a confirmation step to every new signup: instead of joining your list immediately, the contact receives a confirmation email and is only subscribed after clicking the link inside it.

  1. Go to Marketing → Settings and turn on Double opt-in (“Require confirmation for new subscribers”). The toggle saves immediately.

  2. From then on, a signup from your newsletter form or checkout sets the contact to Pending and sends a confirmation email.

  3. When the contact clicks the confirmation link, they flip to Subscribed and start receiving marketing email. Until then they receive nothing.

Verified account sign-ups are unaffected — a buyer who creates an account and verifies their address has already proven they own it.

Double opt-in is off by default, but it’s worth turning on if you sell into regions with strict consent rules (much of the EU expects it) or if list quality matters more to you than list size: confirmed subscribers bounce less, complain less, and open more.

How people unsubscribe

Every marketing email gives recipients two exits, and you don’t configure either one:

  • The footer unsubscribe link — present in every marketing email, automatically. It can’t be removed in the email builder; a marketing email without an unsubscribe link never leaves the platform.
  • One-click unsubscribe — every send carries RFC 8058 one-click unsubscribe headers, so Gmail, Apple Mail, and other inboxes show their own native Unsubscribe button at the top of the message. One tap opts the contact out, with no page to visit.

An unsubscribe takes effect immediately: the contact’s status flips to Unsubscribed, a suppression is recorded, and every future send skips them — whatever audience they appear in.

Suppression: the automatic safety net

A suppression is a hard block on an address, enforced at send time on top of subscription status. Even a subscribed contact in your chosen audience is skipped while a suppression is active. Suppressions are created automatically:

ReasonWhat creates it
UnsubscribeThe contact clicked an unsubscribe link or button.
BounceThe address hard-bounced — it doesn’t exist or can’t accept mail.
ComplaintThe contact marked a message as spam.
Provider blockThe receiving mail provider refused delivery.
ManualYou added the address yourself (see below).

You don’t manage this list day to day — it fills and enforces itself. Its job is to protect deliverability: repeatedly mailing dead or unwilling addresses is what gets a sender flagged as spam, so Sellerlane simply never does it.

The Unsubscribes & suppression section

The admin view lives at the bottom of Marketing → Settings, collapsed under Unsubscribes & suppression with a one-line summary of how many addresses are suppressed and how many unsubscribes you’ve had. Expand it and open View suppression list for the full page. You’ll realistically visit for two reasons:

Suppress an address manually

Use Add suppression when someone asks you — outside of email — to stop mailing them: a complaint sent to support, a legal or data-protection request, or an address you know is problematic.

  1. Open Marketing → Settings, expand Unsubscribes & suppression, and click View suppression list.

  2. Under Add suppression, enter the email address.

  3. Pick the scope — Marketing email only, or All email to also stop review requests. Order and account emails are always sent regardless.

  4. Click Suppress. The block is active immediately and applies to every future send.

Check why someone isn’t receiving mail

If a customer says your emails aren’t arriving, check two places:

  1. Open their customer profile and look at the Marketing status on the Overview tab. Not subscribed, Pending, or Unsubscribed explains it — only Subscribed contacts receive marketing email.

  2. If they’re subscribed, search their address in the suppression list. A bounce, complaint, or provider-block suppression means the status says subscribed but sends are being skipped — the profile can’t show this, the suppression list can.

Each row shows the contact, scope, reason, source, when it was added, and whether it’s still active. A Recent unsubscribes log below the list shows who opted out and where the unsubscribe came from.

You can Remove a bounce, complaint, or manual suppression once the underlying problem is fixed — say the customer’s mailbox was full and is working again. Unsubscribe suppressions are the exception: they can’t be removed by you at all. The contact must re-subscribe themselves through a signup form or checkout.

Compliance posture

The defaults are built to keep an ordinary store compliant with CAN-SPAM and comfortable under GDPR-style consent regimes without configuration:

  • Opt-in first — nobody receives marketing email without a recorded opt-in. The one narrow exception: the abandoned-checkout automation can (optionally) email a guest who typed their address at checkout but never subscribed, a recovery message about their own transaction. See Automations.
  • Working opt-out in every message — the footer link plus RFC 8058 one-click headers, honored instantly and permanently.
  • No silent re-subscription — unsubscribes are one-way until the contact acts.
  • Consent-aware measurement — attribution respects consent as well, so reporting doesn’t leak around it.

Stricter jurisdictions may additionally expect confirmed opt-in — that’s the double opt-in toggle. As always, the platform enforces mechanics; what counts as valid consent for your business in your market is a question for your legal adviser.