Unsubscribing contacts no longer has to be all or nothing. With Nimble’s new category-based unsubscribes feature, recipients can opt out of specific email categories and continue to receive the updates they value most. This flexibility helps you retain more contacts, maintain trust, and keep your outreach effective without overwhelming your audience.
Table of contents:
Why Category-Based Unsubscribes Are Important
Category-based unsubscribes let recipients unsubscribe from certain kinds of emails - such as promotions, event invitations, or educational content – while still receiving essential communications like product updates or billing notices.
Category-based unsubscribes ensure important messages aren’t lost, reduce churn, and support compliance with regulations like GDPR and CAN-SPAM. By respecting subscriber preferences, you build trust, maintain engagement, and gain valuable insights for better segmentation and targeting, ultimately improving deliverability and retention.
Creating Unsubscribe Categories
Having unsubscribes categorized lets you organize your emails so recipients can choose exactly what they want to receive from you. You can create different categories like product updates, new feature alerts, or webinars and events, depending on the type of content you aim to send.
To make things easier, we’ve set up some categories to help you get started - you can find them in the Do Not Mail List settings:
Event Invitations – Webinars, conferences, live or virtual events
Legacy Unsubscribe All – Legacy category containing all emails unsubscribed before categories were introduced
Newsletters & Educational Content – Tips, blog posts, company news
Product Updates – New features, improvements, release notes
Promotional Emails – Sales, discounts, special offers
Transactional & Account Messages – Order confirmations, receipts, security notices
To create your own unsubscribe categories, take the next steps:
Visit Email Settings >> Do Not Mail List
Click on the Settings button and click ‘Add New Category’
Type the Category name and description, and click ‘Create category’
To update a category’s name or description, click the pencil icon. To archive a category you no longer need, click the trash bin icon:
Explore Nimble’s Do Not Mail List further in our support guide: Nimble's Do Not Mail List.
Adding Category-Based Unsubscribe Link to Messages
Once your unsubscribe categories are set up, you’re ready to start sending group messages and email sequences with the category-based unsubscribe link. To add the link, simply click Editor Commands in the message composer and select Unsubscribe.
You’ll see the list of categories you’ve created. Selecting at least one category when adding the unsubscribe link is required, though you can choose multiple of them. Recipients will only be unsubscribed from the categories you’ve selected.
Please note: The unsubscribe link is not available for individual messages. However, it can be included in messages sent through Workflow automation.
Adding Contacts to Unsubscribe Categories inside Nimble
You and your teammates can manually add contacts to the categories in the unsubscribe list. To do this, open the contact’s record, click the three dots next to Edit, and select Add to Unsubscribe List. Then choose the relevant unsubscribe categories.
You can also unsubscribe one or multiple contacts by going to Email Settings >> Do Not Mail List and clicking ‘Add to unsubscribe’:
Tracking Unsubscribed Contacts
In the Do Not Mail List, you can review all unsubscribed contacts, including the date, reason for unsubscribing, and the categories they opted out of.
Clicking on a category in the Unsubscribed From column will show you the list of recipients who unsubscribed from that specific category.
How Can a Contact Re-subscribe?
If your contact explicitly asks to re-subscribe them you can take the following steps to remove them from the unsubscribes:
Visit Email Settings >> Do Not Mail List
In the Unsubscribe Preferences column, click the Unsubscribe Preferences button
Deselect the category the contact opted out of, confim the action and save your changes.
*** Important: please avoid re-subscribing recipients unless they explicitly request it.
Who Benefits from Category-Based Unsubscribes
Nimble’s category-based unsubscribe feature is designed for those who send multiple types of email communications and want to reduce total opt-outs without losing important connections. It’s especially useful for:
Businesses running ongoing outreach such as product updates, promotions, newsletters, or event invitations.
Teams that send both essential and optional emails - like billing notices, account alerts, and marketing offers - and want to ensure critical messages still get delivered.
Organizations aiming to stay compliant with regulations like GDPR and CAN-SPAM by offering clear unsubscribe options.
Marketers and outreach managers looking to improve engagement and segmentation with insights into subscriber preferences.
Senders who want to protect deliverability by keeping emails relevant and reducing spam complaints.
Please, note:
Contacts who unsubscribed before the category-based unsubscribes launched are considered legacy unsubscribes. They remain on your Do Not Mail list, fully excluded from all email types, and cannot be assigned to categories. Such contacts will stay opted out of all communications, preserving past preferences and ensuring compliance.
If you have any questions, please write us at care@nimble.com, initiate a chat from this FAQ, or join one of our Nimble Onboarding and Best Practices sessions, held every weekday at 9 AM PT.