Unsubscribe and suppression

Every marketing and prospecting message is checked twice before it leaves:

• Consent. The person has consent on record for that channel and purpose. Each record keeps where it came from.

• Suppression. The address or number is not suppressed.

A message that fails either check is recorded as blocked with a reason. It is not sent. No setting or API call turns this off.

Record consent

The person must exist first (POST /v1/profiles, an event, or an import).

curl -s -X POST "$BASE/v1/consent/batch/write" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $HERMETICA_API_KEY" -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"items":[{"target":{"email":"ada@example.com"},
       "consent":{"channel":"email","purpose":"marketing","status":"granted","source":"form",
                  "sourceRef":"newsletter form","disclosureText":"Yes, email me product news."}}]}'

A suppressed address is refused here with "Address is suppressed". Consent never overrides a suppression.

Look someone up

curl -s "$BASE/v1/consent/lookup?email=ada@example.com" -H "Authorization: Bearer $HERMETICA_API_KEY"

You get their consent states and any active suppressions. To see why one send would be blocked:

curl -s -X POST "$BASE/v1/eligibility/check" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $HERMETICA_API_KEY" -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"profileId":"<profileId>","channel":"email","purpose":"marketing","destination":"ada@example.com"}'

The unsubscribe link

Put {{ unsubscribe_url }} in every marketing email. Hermeticor also adds the one-click List-Unsubscribe header.

• Opening the link shows a confirm page. Link scanners cannot unsubscribe anyone.

• Confirming (or a one-click request from the mail app) revokes consent and adds an unsubscribe suppression.

• The page offers Resubscribe, which undoes that unsubscribe only. It never grants consent to someone who had none.

• The page links the preference centre, where people pick topics, frequency or a pause.

• {{ preferences_url }} is the same signed link as {{ unsubscribe_url }}: both open that page, and the preference centre is one click from it.

SMS honours STOP replies.

Suppress someone yourself

curl -s -X POST "$BASE/v1/suppressions" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $HERMETICA_API_KEY" -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"channel":"email","value":"someone@example.com","reason":"manual","sourceRef":"Support ticket 123"}'

Suppressions ignore case and +tag variants: suppressing someone@example.com also blocks Someone+news@example.com.

Other ways:

• A whole profile: POST /v1/profiles/<id>/suppress {}. Nothing at all is sent to them until you lift it.

• Stop all marketing for people: POST /v1/consent/batch/unsubscribe-all {"items":[{"email":"..."}],"source":"Support ticket"} (targets still works but is deprecated).

• A file: POST /v1/suppressions/import with -F file=@list.csv -F mode=preview, then again with mode=commit.

• A whole domain, for every kind of message: POST /v1/blocklist {"domain":"competitor.example","reason":"..."}.

What blocks what

Hard bounces and complaints are added automatically from your provider's reports.

Transactional messages

Receipts, password resets and other messages a person asked for are transactional. They do not need marketing consent and ignore quiet hours. They still stop at hard bounces, complaints, manual and do-not-contact suppressions, and blocked domains. Use transactional only for those messages. Sending marketing as transactional breaks the law in most countries and your provider's terms.

Lifting a suppression

POST /v1/suppressions/<id>/lift {"reason":"..."}. Lifting a hard bounce needs an admin signed in to the web app; an API key cannot do it.

Data requests from your contacts

• Copy of their data: POST /v1/profiles/<id>/dsar/export {}.

• Erase them: POST /v1/profiles/<id>/dsar/erase {}. Hermeticor keeps a do-not-contact suppression, so they are never marketed to again by mistake.