What does Opt-in and Opt-out mean?

All responsible email marketers will ask up front whether or not you want to hear from them by email. The usual place to do this is on their website but many use offline opportunities like application and memberships forms or surveys.

Giving your permission to an organisation to be contacted via Email is called opt-in. Double opt-in essentially involves a two step process for joining a mailing list.

Opt-out is the opposite of opt-in and is the term used for removing your email address from a list. An opt-out link should be attached to emails you receive from the lists you have joined so that you can leave at any time.

The terms opt-in and opt-out are also referred to as subscribe and unsubscribe.

You do need to be careful of clicking on any links in a suspected spam message though, as this tells the sender a real person exists who is reading and responding to email messages.

Once this is known the information can be on-sold and you may end up with even more spam from other people.