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Email Preferences

Email Preferences is where you can set specific outbound email settings like custom footers, custom opt-in and opt-out pages, and more. Including these options in your outbound emails make for a fluid and cohesive experience for your users.

Email Preferences can be found under Settings in the dashboard.

Sending configuration

The email settings under the Sending Configuration section determine which details are included in your email campaigns. In particular, these settings are mainly related to what your user sees when they receive an email from Braze.

Outbound email settings

When configuring your email settings, your outbound email settings identify which name and email addresses are used when Braze sends emails to your users.

In this section, you can add the names and email addresses that can be used when Braze sends emails to your users. The display names and email addresses will be available in the Edit Sending Info options as you compose your email campaign. Note that updates made to the outbound email settings do not retroactively affect existing sends.

When setting your “From” addresses, make sure your “From” email domain matches your sending domain (such as marketing.yourdomain.com). Failure to do this may result in SPF and DKIM misalignment. Emails with dynamic “From” addresses will be sent from the IP pool of the corresponding sending domain. All reply-to emails can be set to your root domain.

Adding an email address in this section allows you to select it as a reply-to address for your email campaign. You can also make an email address the default one by selecting Make Default. These email addresses will be available in the Edit Sending Info options as you compose your email campaign.

This section allows you to add and manage BCC addresses that can be appended to outbound email messages sent from Braze. Appending a BCC address to an email message will send an identical copy of the message your user receives to your BCC inbox. This is a useful tool to retain copies of messages you sent your users for compliance requirements or customer support issues.

BCC Address section of the Email Settings tab.

Once you add an address, the address will be made available to select when composing an email in either campaigns or Canvas steps. Select Make Default next to an address to set this address to be selected by default when launching a new email campaign or Canvas component. To override this at the message level, you can select No BCC when setting up your message.

If you require that all email messages sent from Braze have a BCC address included, you can select the Require a BCC address for all your email campaigns toggle. This will require you to select a default address which will be automatically selected on new email campaigns or Canvas steps. The default address will also be automatically added to all messages triggered through our REST API. There is no need to change the existing API request to include the address.

Open tracking pixel

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The email opening tracking pixel is an invisible 1 x 1 px image that automatically gets inserted into your email HTML. This pixel helps Braze detect whether the end-users have opened your email. Email open information can be very useful, helping users determine effective marketing strategies by understanding the corresponding open rates.

Placing the tracking pixel

The default behavior in Braze is to append the tracking pixel to the bottom of your email. For the majority of users, this is the ideal place to put the pixel. While the pixel is already styled to cause as few visual changes as possible, any unintentional visual changes would be the least visible at the bottom of an email. This is also the default for email providers such as SendGrid and SparkPost.

Changing location of tracking pixel

Braze currently supports overriding the ESP’s default open tracking pixel location (the last tag in the <body> of an email) to move it to the first tag in the <body>.

To change the location:

  1. In Braze, go to Settings > Email Preferences.
  2. Click the checkbox under Custom Open Tracking Pixel Settings.
  3. Press Save.

Once saved, Braze will send special instructions to the ESP in order to place the open tracking pixel at the top of all HTML emails.

List-unsubscribe header

Using a list-unsubscribe header allows your recipients to unsubscribe easily from marketing emails by displaying an Unsubscribe button within the mailbox UI, and not the message body.

When a recipient clicks Unsubscribe, the mailbox provider sends the unsubscribe request to the destination defined in the email header.

Enabling list-unsubscribe is a deliverability best practice and a requirement at some of the premier mailbox providers. It encourages end users to safely remove themselves from unwanted messages versus hitting the spam button in an email client, the latter of which is detrimental to sending reputation and email deliverability.

How it works

When turned on, this feature is applied to the entire workspace, not the company-level. It’s added to campaigns and Canvases that are set up to send to users who are subscribed or opted-in, or opted-in users only in the Target Audiences step of the campaign and Canvas builders.

Braze doesn’t add the header for what is considered transactional, so if a message is set to send to all users including unsubscribed users, the list-unsubscribe header will not be attached to the message. Additionally, the header is not added for messages delivered via test send because the list-unsubscribe header is only generated and added for targeting user profiles in Braze.

Default list-unsubscribe header

To use the Braze unsubscribe feature to process unsubscribes directly, select Include a one-click list-unsubscribe (mailto and HTTP) email header for emails sent to subscribed or opted-in users and select Braze default as the standard Braze URl and mail-to.

Option to automatically include a list-unsubscribe header for emails sent to subscribed or opted-in users.

Braze supports the following versions of the list-unsubscribe header:

List-unsubscribe version Description
One-click (RFC 8058) Offers a straightforward way for recipients to opt-out from emails with a single click. This is a requirement from Yahoo and Gmail for bulk senders.
List-unsubscribe URL or HTTPS Provides recipients with a link that directs the recipient to a web page where they can unsubscribe.
Mailto Specifies an email address as the destination for the unsubscribe request message to be sent to from the recipient to the brand.

To process mailto list-unsubscribe requests, such unsubscribe requests need to include the email address as stored in Braze for the End User who is unsubscribing. This may be provided by the “from-address” of the email from where the End User is unsubscribing, the encoded subject or the encoded body from the email received by the End User that they are unsubscribing from. In very limited cases, some inbox providers don’t adhere to the RFC 2368 protocol resulting in the email address not being properly passed. This can lead to an unsubscribe request not being able to be processed in Braze.

When Braze receives a list-unsubscribe request from a user via any of the above methods, this user’s global email subscription state is set to unsubscribed. If there isn’t a match, Braze will not process this request.

One-click unsubscribe

Using one-click unsubscribe for the list-unsubscribe header (RFC 8058) focuses on providing an easy way for recipients to opt-out from emails.

Requirements

If you’re sending emails using your own custom unsubscribe functionality, you must meet the following requirements to make sure the one-click unsubscribe URL that you set up is in accordance with RFC 8058:

  • The URL must be able to handle unsubscribe POST requests.
  • The URL must start with https://.
  • The URL must be wrapped between < and >
  • The URL must not return an HTTPS redirect. One-click unsubscribe links that go to a landing or other type of web page don’t comply with RFC 8058.
  • The message must have a valid DKIM signature.

Select Custom list-unsubscribe header to add your own configured one-click unsubscribe endpoint, and an optional “mailto:”. Braze requires an input for URL to support a custom list-unsubscribe header because the one-click unsubscribe HTTP is a requirement from Yahoo and Gmail for bulk senders.

Mailbox provider support

The following table summarizes mailbox provider support for “mailto:” header, list-unsubscribe URL, and one-click unsubscribe (RFC 8058).

List-unsubscribe header Mailto: header List-unsubscribe URL One-click unsubscribe (RFC 8058)
Gmail Supported* Supported Supported
Gmail Mobile Not supported Not supported Not supported
Apple Mail Supported Not supported Not supported
Outlook.com Supported Not supported Not supported
Yahoo! Mail Supported* Not supported Supported

*Yahoo and Gmail will eventually deprecate the “mailto:” header and will only support one-click.

Displaying the header is ultimately determined by the mailbox provider. To check if the list-unsubscribe header is included in the raw (text) email for the recipient in Gmail, do the following:

  1. Select Show Original in the email. This opens a new tab with the raw version of the email and its headers.
  2. Search for “List-Unsubscribe”.

If the header is in the raw version of the email but is not displayed, the mailbox provider has determined to not show the unsubscribe option, meaning we don’t have further insight as to why the mailbox provider isn’t displaying the header. Seeing the list-unsubscribe header is ultimately reputation-based. In most cases, the better your sender reputation with the inbox, the less likely the list-unsubscribe header will appear.

Add one-click unsubscribe to email headers

If you have multiple custom unsubscribe flows for managing many brands or lists in a single workspace, you can manually add a custom one-click unsubscribe header to your email headers.

  1. Go to Sending Settings in your email campaign.
  2. Select Advanced.
  3. Click + Add New Header and add the following:
    • For List-Unsubscribe-Post, enter List-Unsubscribe=One-Click.
    • For List-Unsubscribe, enter your one-click unsubscribe link.

Frequently asked questions

Can the one-click unsubscribe URL (via list-unsubscribe header) link to a preference center?

No, that doesn’t adhere to RFC 8058, meaning you won’t be compliant with Yahoo and Gmail’s one-click unsubscribe requirement.

Will I need to edit past email campaigns and Canvases to apply the one-click unsubscribe setting after enabling it?

No, once the setting is enabled under Email Preferences, Braze will automatically add the one-click unsubscribe headers to all outgoing marketing and promotional messages.

I can see the list-unsubscribe and one-click unsubscribe header in the original message or raw data, but why don’t I see the Unsubscribe button in Gmail or Yahoo?

Gmail and Yahoo ultimately decide whether or not to display the list-unsubscribe or one-click unsubscribe header. For new senders or senders with low sender reputation, this can occasionally cause the unsubscribe button to not display.

Does the custom one-click unsubscribe header support Liquid?

Yes, Liquid and conditional logic are supported to allow for dynamic one-click unsubscribe URLs for the header.

Tips

  • If the URL isn’t wrapped between < and > and doesn’t start with https://, you’ll receive the following message: “Failed to save settings. Please fix any errors before saving.”
  • If you’re adding conditional logic, avoid having output values that add whitespaces to your URL as Braze does not remove these whitespaces.

Append email subject lines

Use the toggle to include “[TEST]” and “[SEED]” in your test and seed email subject lines. This can help identify any email campaigns sent as tests.

Inline CSS on new emails by default

CSS inlining is a technique that automatically inlines CSS styles for your emails and new emails. For some email clients, this can improve the way that your emails render.

Changing this setting will not affect any of your existing email messages or templates. You can override this default at any time while composing messages or templates. For more information, refer to CSS inlining.

Resubscribe users when their email changes

You may automatically resubscribe users when they change their email address. For example, if a previously unsubscribed workspace user changes their email address to one that is not on the unsubscribe list for Braze, they will automatically become resubscribed.

Subscription pages and footers

Braze lets you set a Custom Unsubscribe Page with your own HTML. This page will appear after a user has selected to unsubscribe from the bottom of an email. Note that this page should be less than 750 KB.

Learn more about best practices for email list management in Managing email subscriptions.

You can create a custom opt-in page using your own HTML. Including this in your email can be especially beneficial if you want your branding and message to remain consistent throughout your user lifecycle. Note that this page should be less than 750 KB.

Learn more about best practices for email list management in Managing email subscriptions.

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