THE UNSUBSCRIBE BUTTON YOUR EMAILS LEGALLY NEED
You know those emails you get where you scroll to the bottom looking for a way out and there’s just… nothing? No unsubscribe link, no opt-out, just a one-way conversation you never agreed to stay in. Annoying, right? Turns out it’s also illegal.
In March 2026, Lululemon was fined $702,900 for sending over 370,000 emails without an unsubscribe option. And before you think this is a big-brand problem that doesn’t apply to you, this was the fifth enforcement action in 18 months. Regulators are actively looking for this.
The part that trips most people up
The Lululemon case is worth understanding because the mistake wasn’t obvious. They weren’t sending blatant spam. They were sending order confirmations and shipping updates, standard transactional emails that also happened to include a promotional banner or a link to a sale.
That’s all it takes. The moment a marketing element appears in any email, it is legally considered a commercial message and must include an unsubscribe option. It doesn’t matter what the primary purpose of the email is.
Think about your own email templates. Your welcome sequence, your inquiry confirmation, your onboarding emails. If any of them mention a service, a promotion, or link back to a sales page, they need an unsubscribe option.
What you need to do
Good news, it’s quite simple. Every email platform worth using, Flodesk, Mailchimp, Kit, ActiveCampaign, has this built in. You just need to make sure it’s there and that you haven’t accidentally removed it while customising your templates.
Two rules to follow:
Keep your transactional emails truly transactional. If it’s a booking confirmation or a delivery update, keep it clean. No promotions, no “while you’re here, check this out.”
Every marketing email needs an unsubscribe link, full stop. Welcome sequences, nurture emails, newsletters, promotional campaigns. All of them.
And here’s something worth knowing — where you place that link actually matters beyond just ticking the legal box. When your unsubscribe option is easy to find and embedded naturally in your content rather than hidden in tiny footer text, subscribers who want out will use it. The alternative is they mark you as spam, which tanks your deliverability and affects whether your emails even reach inboxes at all. Transparency here works in your favour. If you’re using Kit, here’s how to customise your unsubscribe text so it feels intentional rather than like an afterthought.
Get your templates right from the start
Like the legal pages on your website, this is a set-and-forget situation once it’s done properly. Check your email templates now, make sure the unsubscribe link is in every one that contains any marketing content, and you won’t have to think about it again.
Not on Kit yet? It’s our email platform of choice
