What does opt-out mean?

When someone has opted out, it generally means that they’ve indicated a preference to not be included in something. A common scenario is where users opt-out of an email list by unsubscribing or where Californian consumers opt out of having their personal information shared or sold under CCPA provisions.

You are subscribed to a newsletter but later decide you don’t want to receive it anymore. At the bottom of each email, there’s a link that says “Unsubscribe” Clicking this link will take you to a webpage where you can confirm you want to stop receiving emails. This process is an example of opting out. After you confirm, the company will stop sending you the newsletter. This allows you to easily remove yourself from their mailing list.

The meaning of opt-in is that a user must take a positive or affirmative action before being included in something (e.g. a user has opted in if they sign-up to an email list or click “Accept” on a consent banner).

Opt-out means that a user can bee included in something without the need of any action on their part (e.g including a US-based user on an email list under CAN-SPAM provisions ). Under most opt-out regimes, users must be given the possibility to opt-out easily.

Where opt-out regimes legally apply, they can pose both pros and cons to marketing. We outline the main points below:

Pros

• Greatly simplifies marketing efforts on a technical level (no need to set up consent collection mechanisms)
• Larger lists (as users can be added at any time unless they’ve previously opted out) and, therefore, an increased potential to get the message in front of more users.

Cons

• Less targeted list. Because anyone can be added there’s a high possibility of reaching users that are not interested in the product or service being marketed.
• Higher risk of annoying users and being flagged as spam, which can reduce the overall reach on mailing lists and leas to being black-listed by email filters.