Please stop sending me these
A features editor replies to a release: she no longer covers retail, please remove her from your lists. The executive who sent it deletes her from that spreadsheet and replies with an apology. Three weeks later a different team sends her a release about a shop opening, from a list built last year. She replies again, less politely, and this time copies in your managing director.
Nobody ignored her. The request was handled properly in the place it arrived. It just never reached the other thirty lists where her address still sits.
Why a removal in one list is not a removal
An opt-out is a fact about a person, but most agencies store it as an edit to a file. That mismatch is the whole problem.
- Lists are copies, so deleting a row from one leaves every other copy untouched.
- Some teams send through Outlook, some through a mail merge tool, some through the media database's own distribution feature, and each has its own unsubscribe records.
- Requests arrive in different ways: a reply, a phone call, a word at an event, an unsubscribe link.
- Partial opt-outs, such as no more retail releases but still happy to hear about technology, have nowhere to be written down.
- The media database may reimport the address the next time someone exports a fresh list.
How opt-outs should be handled under data protection rules is a question for your own adviser or data protection lead. The part we deal with is making sure your agency's decision is applied everywhere.
What a repeat send costs
Journalists talk to each other and to your clients. An agency that keeps emailing someone who asked it to stop gets a reputation that reaches new business pitches. It can also turn into a formal complaint, which takes senior time to handle and is uncomfortable to explain to a client whose release caused it.
Inside the agency, the uncertainty has its own cost. Teams start keeping their own private block lists, which makes the underlying problem worse.
How we build one suppression record
- We create a single suppression list held against the journalist record, not against any campaign list.
- Opt-outs are captured from every route: replies to releases are read and likely opt-outs flagged for confirmation, unsubscribe events are pulled from sending tools, and staff can log a verbal request in a form that takes seconds.
- Each entry records the scope, whether full or limited to certain topics or clients, the date, the source and who logged it.
- Every list pulls live from the contact records, so a suppressed journalist drops out of every list at once.
- Before a send, the list is checked against the suppression record again, and any sending tool we can connect to is kept in step so an address is suppressed there too.
- New imports from the media database are checked on arrival, so a suppressed address cannot come back in through a fresh export.
| Opt-out route | How it reaches the record |
|---|---|
| Reply to a release | Flagged from the sending mailbox, confirmed by a person |
| Unsubscribe link | Pulled from the sending tool |
| Phone call or conversation | Logged by staff in a short form |
| Topic-only request | Stored with scope so only matching lists exclude them |
| Media database reimport | Checked on import and blocked |
Topic-limited opt-outs need your categories to be consistent, so part of the work is agreeing a short list of topics and tagging lists against it.
The week after it goes live
The features editor's request from last month is already on the suppression record, scoped to retail. When the shop-opening team builds their list, she is not on it. When the technology team builds theirs, she is, because she said she was still happy to hear about technology.
A new executive who is unsure whether a journalist opted out searches their name and sees the entry, the date and the scope. No private block lists, no asking around.
Is this a risk for your agency?
- Opt-outs are handled by deleting rows from one spreadsheet.
- A journalist has complained about receiving releases after asking to stop.
- Different teams use different sending tools with separate unsubscribe lists.
- Nobody can produce a list of everyone who has opted out.
- Topic-specific requests are not recorded at all.