You need a clear way for the person to tell you to stop. You don't always need a link. For one-to-one business email sent from your own inbox, a plain sentence at the bottom meets the US rule, as long as you act on the request. This is general information, not legal advice.
The link question gets more attention than it deserves, because the part that gets senders in trouble is what happens after someone says stop. A beautiful one-click button doesn't help if the follow-up goes out anyway on day four. This article covers the wording, the cases where a link is the better call, and the routine that makes the opt-out real.
What the rule says about opt-outs
The FTC's CAN-SPAM guide asks for a "clear and conspicuous explanation of how the recipient can opt out." It lets you do that by reply email or a single web page, and says you can't charge a fee or ask for more than an email address. You have 10 business days to honor a request, and the method has to keep working for 30 days after you send. The full picture, including what falls outside the law, is in our CAN-SPAM basics article. Nothing in the guide says the opt-out must be a link.
Four plain-text opt-out lines to paste
Put one of these under your signature or as the last line of the message. Each suits a different moment.
1. The default. "If this isn't relevant, reply 'no thanks' and I won't email you again." Use it on the first email. It is short, doesn't sound like a form letter, and a person can answer in two words. Variation: "just say so" instead of "reply 'no thanks'" if your tone is looser.
2. The wrong-person line. "If you're not the right person, point me to who is, or tell me to stop and I'll take you off my list." Use it when your list is built from job titles and you suspect some of them are wrong. It turns a stop request into a possible referral, and it covers the legal point in the same breath.
3. The last-email line. "This is my last note on this. If you'd rather I never write again, just say so." Use it on the final message in a sequence. It lets the person off the hook, and people often answer a message that asks nothing of them.
4. The explicit line. "To stop getting emails from me, reply with the word STOP." Use it when the person might not be a US business contact, or when you are sending more than a few dozen a day and want zero ambiguity. It reads more like a form, but it is the hardest one to misread.
Whichever you use, keep it in plain text under the signature, not in tiny gray type. The point is that someone can find the exit in three seconds.
When a link is the better choice
A link makes sense in four situations. You send through a tool at a volume where replies can't be read by hand. Your list includes people who have never heard of you and are likely to hit the spam button instead of replying. You send both cold emails and newsletters from the same address. Or you send in the thousands: Google's bulk sender rules, which apply to roughly 5,000 or more messages a day to Gmail addresses, call for one-click unsubscribe and for requests to be processed within two days.
If you add a link, make it work in one step. It should unsubscribe on click, show a one-line "You're off the list," and not ask for a password, a reason or a form. A link that makes the person do work is the same as no link, and it can be worse than no link, because it creates complaints.
Honor the request the same day
Ten business days is the legal limit. Same day should be your rule, because the cost of being slow is a second unwanted email, and a second unwanted email is the one that gets reported. Here is the whole routine, about two minutes per request:
- Reply with one line: "Done, you won't hear from me again." Don't explain, don't pitch, don't ask why.
- Add their address to your do-not-contact list.
- Cancel any scheduled follow-up to that address.
- Check every tool you send from. If you use two, both need updating.
What to say when the reply is short or irritated is covered in how to respond to a "remove me" email.
Keep one do-not-contact list
A spreadsheet is enough. Four columns: address, domain, date, where the request came from. Two habits make it work. Check every new import against it before you send. And when someone writes "please stop emailing anyone here," log the domain too, and screen new contacts at that company against it.
Ines runs Harbor Print Co., a small print shop that sells custom packaging to local bakeries, and sends about 25 emails a day. In her first month she got four opt-out replies across 500 sends. She put them in the sheet the same day. Two weeks later a re-imported list brought one of those addresses back. Because she checked the import against the sheet first, it never got an email. That check takes under a minute and it is the thing most people skip.
What an easy exit does for deliverability
People who can't find a way out use the report-spam button, and that is a signal mailbox providers watch closely. Google's guidance for bulk senders is to keep the user-reported spam rate under 0.10% and never reach 0.30%. Do the arithmetic on a small sender: 600 emails a month with 3 spam reports is 0.5%. That is above the line even though the volume is tiny and the emails were honest. A plain opt-out line that people actually see is cheaper than three reports.
Replies that just say stop
You will get some: "stop," "unsubscribe," "remove me." Treat any message that clearly asks you to stop as an opt-out, even if it doesn't use a keyword. Don't try to save the relationship. One acknowledgment, then it's done. If the reply is angry, the response is the same and just as short. The detail on these replies sits in how to answer a "not interested" reply, which covers the softer no's you can reply to.
With Rocketship, outreach goes out from your own Gmail with a one-click unsubscribe header on by default (you can turn it off in settings), replies are read as they arrive, and a reply that asks to be removed ends that person's follow-ups and keeps the address from being contacted again. The line under your signature is still yours to write. For how a signature fits in, see cold email signatures, and for how this affects delivery, cold email bounce rate covers the other side of list hygiene.
Looking after opt-outs, bounces and follow-ups by hand is the part of cold email people drop first. Rocketship finds the buyers, emails them from your own Gmail, follows up, and books the meeting on its own. Plans that get you customers start at $24.99 a month (Launch), and every monthly plan starts with a 7-day free trial, card required. See how the AI workers run outreach.