How quickly must unsubscribe requests be honored under CAN-SPAM?
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CAN-SPAM gives you 10 business days to process an unsubscribe request and stop sending commercial email to that address. After that window, sending to them violates federal law.
The law also requires your unsubscribe mechanism to stay functional for at least 30 days after you send the email. If someone opens your campaign three weeks later and clicks unsubscribe, the link still has to work. Broken links don't excuse late processing.
Once someone unsubscribes, there are additional constraints: you can't charge a fee, require them to log in, ask for information beyond their email address, or add them back to a different list. You can't route them to a survey first. One step, and they're done.
The 10-day window is a legal ceiling, not a target. Most modern ESPs handle unsubscribes in real time. If yours doesn't, or if you're sending through a custom setup, suppression needs to happen before your next send. People who unsubscribe and then receive another email immediately will file spam complaints. That hurts your deliverability faster than a regulatory penalty.
If your unsubscribe process is broken or delayed, fix it now. The SOS call is free and we can help you diagnose what's going wrong.
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