What does "List-unsubscribe header" mean when reviewing a contact's subscription status history?

[pahy96]

I had a contact who said they hadn't received anything from us in quite a few months. I saw in their activity log that they unsubscribed in February. When I went to resubscribe them, I noticed their subscription history said they unsubscribed via the "List-unsubscribe header."

I assume this shows up in most email clients at the top of the emails and isn't part of Hubspot's tracking capability (e.g. this wouldn't show up as an unsubscribe for the marketing email it was related to).

Is this the correct interpretation of this field? I was initially worried the individual had been unsubscribed manually by someone on our team internally by accident.

[Ben_M · Accepted solution]

You are correct. It's an optional header that allows a recipient to unsubscribe without clicking your hubspot unsubscribe link or making a spam complaint. You may see this in gmail or an apple mail client at the top or gmail even shows this outside of the email in the inbo without having to open the email to unsubscribe from it.

One thing I would review is what you were sending to the contacts. If the information was important and not marketing in nature, you should be sending through a transactional service (hubspot offers this as an addon) to bypass GDPR and send important (non-marketing) announcements to your clients/prospects, even if they unsubscribe.