Consent and subscriptions

Learn how consent is collected, recorded on contact profiles, and best practices for WhatsApp, Email, and SMS compliance.

Unsubscribe vs Suppression

Unsubscribe:

• A contact actively withdrawing permission to receive marketing messages via Campaigns

• Managed at the channel level (e.g., can unsubscribe from SMS but stay subscribed to Email)

• Only applies to Campaign messages, not Inbox messages

• Triggered by customer action (clicking unsubscribe link, texting "STOP")

Suppression:

• A compliance block that prevents you from sending messages to a specific identifier (phone number or email address)

• Works at the identifier level, not contact level

• Can be triggered multiple ways: unsubscribe, spam complaints, hard bounces, manual addition, or global suppression list

• More comprehensive than unsubscribe—includes automatic blocks for deliverability issues

Key relationship: When a contact unsubscribes from a channel, it automatically creates a suppression (compliance block) for that identifier on that channel.

Example:

• A contact unsubscribes from SMS = Creates a suppression on their phone number for SMS

• That same contact's email can still receive emails (different identifier, different channel)

• If their email hard bounces = Automatic suppression added for that email address