explain why there's no unsubscribe

[chadwhitacre]

We use include_unsubscribe=False for verification emails. There, it's obvious why there's no unsubscribe link. For any other case where we use this, we should provide an explanation, e.g.:

This is an important transactional or relationship message associated with your Gratipay account. To avoid receiving messages like this in the future, please close your Gratipay account.

Reticketed from gratipay/inside.gratipay.com#235.

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[ehmatthes]

This is an important transactional or relationship message associated with your Gratipay account. To avoid receiving messages like this in the future, please close your Gratipay account.

This sounds a little aggressive, or overly blunt. I don't think it's a message people are used to seeing from other services. Perhaps it could be clarified a little?

This is an important a critical transactional or relationship message associated with your Gratipay account. Critical messages are sent to all Gratipay users; to avoid receiving messages like this in the future, please you'll have to close your Gratipay account.

Also, is there a requirement to have an unsubscribe link, or just information about how to unsubscribe? If a link is required, the message should link to the page where people can close their account.

[chadwhitacre]

@ehmatthes The unsubscribe link is only required for "commercial" messages, not for "transactional and relational" messages. There's more on gratipay/inside.gratipay.com#235 (comment) about the distinction.

If we follow the guidelines better about distinguishing transactional and commercial messages, maybe we can keep it simpler? What do most other services do?

[ehmatthes]

What do most other services do?

I'm not sure exactly, but I'm pretty sure I've never seen a message telling me to delete my account in order to stop receiving emails.

[webmaven]

I think transactional messages can just have a 'manage subscriptions' link going to a page that lists all types of messaging, with checkboxes etc.

To manage the types of messages you receive from Gratipay, go to the manage subscriptions page.

The note about transactional messages not being unsubscribable can appear on that page, perhaps with an appropriate link to the TOS.

Here is example from the footer of a e-commerce transactional message I received the other day:

Need to update your information? It's easy. Login to your account.

For that online retailer, all other messages seems to be opt-in, and I haven't received anything yet but that single transactional message.

[chadwhitacre]

[...] I'm pretty sure I've never seen a message telling me to delete my account in order to stop receiving emails.

HackerOne provides an example (ref):

[chadwhitacre]

An example from Google:

You received this mandatory email service announcement to update you about important changes to your Google product or account.