Commercial unsubscribe

Knock provides built-in support for commercial email unsubscribe functionality, allowing recipients to opt out of promotional or commercial messages with a single click.

When you mark a workflow or broadcast as commercial, Knock automatically handles the necessary unsubscribe functionality:

1. Adds required unsubscribe headers to all emails sent through that workflow or broadcast.
2. Provides an unsubscribe URL variable that can be included in your email templates.
3. Manages recipient opt-outs during preference set evaluation.

To enable commercial unsubscribe functionality for a workflow or broadcast:

1. Navigate to the workflow or broadcast.
2. For a workflow, click "Manage workflow." For a broadcast, click "Edit details."
3. Toggle "Commercial."
4. Save your changes.
5. For a workflow, commit your changes.

Once enabled, Knock will automatically include the necessary unsubscribe headers in all emails sent through that workflow.

When configuring an email layout using the visual editor, you can add an unsubscribe link to your email footer by clicking the "Add link" dropdown and selecting "1-click unsubscribe".

You can add an unsubscribe link to your email layouts or templates using the built-in variable:

You can conditionally include the link by checking if the variable is present:

When a user unsubscribes by clicking the unsubscribe link, Knock displays a confirmation page showing they have been successfully unsubscribed from commercial messages. You can customize this page by navigating to Platform > Preferences, then clicking the Unsubscribe tab.

When a recipient clicks the unsubscribe link, their default preference set will be updated, marking commercial_subscribed as false. They will be opted-out of commercial messages, and they will continue to receive transactional messages based on their other preferences.

This recipient-level preference will take precedence over other environment or tenant preferences. Learn more about preference merging.

The unsubscribe link writes this preference for you, but you can also set it yourself. This is useful to sync an opt-out you captured elsewhere in your product, or to backfill preferences across your existing users.

commercial_subscribed lives on the recipient's default preference set. Call the set user preferences endpoint with a merge persistence strategy to update this key without replacing the rest of the preference set.

To update many users at once, use bulk set preferences.

To learn more about managing recipient preferences and building preference centers with Knock, visit our preferences overview.