Unsubscribe and suppression

Every prospect email carries an unsubscribe link

Every email NORA sends to a prospect ends with one line, in small grey text under the signature:

If you would rather not get emails like this, unsubscribe.

The same link is in the plain-text version of the email, and the email carries the two headers mail clients read for one-click unsubscribe (List-Unsubscribe and List-Unsubscribe-Post, the RFC 8058 pair). A mail client that supports them can show its own unsubscribe control, and pressing it works without opening the email.

The link is signed for one recipient and one workspace. It cannot be guessed or edited to opt somebody else out, and it never expires: a cold email can sit in an inbox for a long time before somebody decides they want no more.

The footer is not optional. It is added on all three ways a prospect email leaves your workspace: NORA sending an approved draft herself, you pressing Send on a draft on her Messages screen, and Send all for several at once. If the link cannot be made, the send is refused with a reason rather than going out without it.

What the recipient sees

Opening the link records the opt-out at once. There is no confirm button: somebody who pressed "unsubscribe" in a cold email has already answered. The page says You are unsubscribed, then "You will not get more emails from <your workspace> through Nagent." with a link back to nagent.ai. The name shown is your workspace's name, or your brand's display name where you have set one.

A one-click unsubscribe from the mail client records the same opt-out. The recipient sees nothing from Nagent; their mail client confirms it.

A link that has been altered, or that is not one of ours, records nothing. The page says This link is not valid, then "Nothing was changed. To stop these emails, reply to one and ask to be removed."

That reply is the other way out. A reply NORA reads as an explicit unsubscribe request, a "do not contact", or a legal opt-out records the opt-out too, and the prospect moves to Disqualified on 02 Qualify. A polite "not a fit" also disqualifies the prospect, but it is not an opt-out and the address is not suppressed. See how a prospect moves.

What the suppression list records

The suppression list is your workspace's do-not-contact list. Each row holds an address, the address exactly as it arrived, why it is there, what added it, the date, and sometimes a note (the draft the reply answered, or the delivery event).

A row is written in four ways. Nothing else writes one.

A reply that asks to stop is recorded against two addresses when they differ: the address that replied and the address that was mailed. A colleague answering "take us off" speaks for the person, and neither of them wants more. A temporary bounce (a full mailbox, a server that was down) writes nothing.

The first refusal wins. If the same person opts out twice, the row keeps its original reason and date. Addresses are matched in lower case, and a +tag in the local part is ignored, so alex+sales@ and alex@ at one domain are one entry. That matches more than it strictly needs to, on purpose: a send you could have made is a lost opportunity, a send to somebody who opted out is a breach.

Two things the list does not do today:

• There is no screen for it, and no way to add or remove an address by hand. You meet the list where it acts: in the refusal when a send is tried. Nothing in the product deletes a row, by design. A person who opted out stays opted out.
• It is per workspace. An opt-out from your workspace's emails is kept for your workspace. It says nothing about any other workspace on Nagent, which is a separate sender the person has not refused.

How a send is refused

The list is checked at the moment of sending, not when a draft is approved. A draft approved on Monday and sent on Friday is checked against Friday's list, so an opt-out that arrived in between still holds.

The refusal says who and why, with the date, in the form suppressed: alex@example.com unsubscribed 2026-10-08. It reads the same everywhere:

• Send on a draft shows the refusal as the error, and the draft stays approved and unsent.
• Send all sends the rest and reports "2 skipped because the recipient opted out" when it finishes.
• NORA's own send is refused with the same words. Her level does not change this; a workspace admin and an agent are held to the same check.

If the list cannot be read at all, the send is refused too, with "suppression check failed, refusing to send". That is counted as a failure, never as an opt-out, so an outage can neither mail somebody who opted out nor be reported as if people had.

A promoted prospect keeps their opt-out

A prospect who opted out and is later promoted to a lead arrives in the CRM already marked unsubscribed, with the date they opted out rather than the date of the promotion. This happens on every path a prospect takes into the CRM: you promoting them from 02 Qualify, NORA promoting them, and the enrichment step that writes a company's buying committee into the CRM as leads. The Autopilot card on the lead page reads Lead unsubscribed, and a lead marked unsubscribed is not emailed by a sequence, a nurture follow-up or the sales agent.

Promotion that finds a lead with the same address already in the CRM links to that lead instead of creating one, and does not change its record. The sequencer check below still covers it.

Sequences check the list before every send

Before a sequence drafts or sends an email to a lead, it checks the lead's address against your workspace's suppression list. A suppressed address ends the enrolment as unsubscribed and nothing is sent. This covers an opt-out recorded after the lead was promoted, an address that opted out before it was ever a lead, and rows written before this check existed.

If the list cannot be read during a run, nothing is sent and the enrolment stays active, so it is tried again on the next run rather than ended.

Sequence emails to leads also carry their own footer, "Unsubscribe from automated follow-ups". That link marks the lead unsubscribed and ends their active enrolments. The page the lead sees says they may still get a direct reply from a person while a conversation is open, and that replying STOP to one of those ends that too. See CORA's CRM.

What agents may and may not do

• No agent can send to a suppressed address. NORA's send, the sequencer and every bulk send go through the same check as your own Send button. An agent at a higher level does not get a weaker check.
• No agent can clear an opt-out. In NORA's email contract, a lead's unsubscribed flag and its date are critical fields: a change to one is only ever a proposal, held for a person. No agent tool writes to the suppression list, and no agent tool removes a row from it.
• An agent can record one. NORA's reply classifier and the delivery webhook write rows on the four events above. That is the direction an agent is allowed to move: towards fewer sends, never more.
• Discovery can skip known opt-outs. On NORA's Controls screen, Skip unsubscribed domains at discovery drops a candidate company whose domain already belongs to an unsubscribed lead before it enters the pipeline. The send-time check is always on and does not depend on this toggle.

For your compliance reviewer

You are the sender of every prospect email your workspace sends; Nagent is the platform it leaves through. When you are asked how opt-outs are honoured, these are the facts to give.

• Every prospect email carries a working unsubscribe link in its body and one-click unsubscribe headers. An email that cannot carry the link is not sent.
• An opt-out takes effect on the click, with no confirmation step, and is checked at every send from then on, including sends that were approved before the opt-out arrived.
• A request to stop in a reply, a spam complaint and a permanent bounce are all recorded the same way as a click.
• Each record keeps the address as it arrived, the reason, what recorded it and the date, and the first record for an address is never overwritten.
• No path in the product deletes a record, by people or by agents.
• Records are kept per workspace. They are not shared between workspaces.
• A person who opted out as a prospect stays opted out as a lead.

NORA's Controls screen also has a Lawful basis statement field, free text, for the statement your legal team wants kept with your outbound settings.

Where to go next

• NORA: the agent that sends to prospects, and how a prospect moves.
• VANI: who writes the emails the footer goes on.
• Running outbound campaigns: from a saved audience to a first email.
• CORA's CRM: leads, sequences and who writes to them.