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How does SMS unsubscribe work?

Brave Tools automatically handles SMS opt-outs to keep you GDPR compliant and respect recipient preferences.

Who has unsubscribe functionality?

SMS unsubscribe is only available on the Professional plan when using Bring Your Own Key (BYOK) with your own 46elks account.

With Brave Managed SMS (which Standard plans must use), there is no built-in unsubscribe footer or opt-out tracking. If you need unsubscribe handling, upgrade to Professional and connect your own 46elks account.

How it works with BYOK

When you use BYOK on the Professional plan and enable unsubscribe, every SMS includes a short opt-out link in the footer:

Unsubscribe: https://off.nu/xxxxxxxx

The link uses a short URL (off.nu) to save characters. Each link has a unique token tied to the contact and sender, so we know exactly who clicked.

Opting out a recipient

When a recipient clicks the unsubscribe link:

  1. They see a confirmation page
  2. They click "Confirm unsubscribe"
  3. Their phone number is added to the opt-out list for that sender
  4. All future campaigns skip this contact automatically

Per-sender opt-out

Unsubscribes are tracked per sender name, not globally. If a recipient unsubscribes from one sender, they can still receive SMS from your other senders.

Each sender gets a corresponding HubSpot contact property to track opt-outs, so you can see the status directly in HubSpot.

Customizing the footer

In BYOK settings you can customize:

  • The prefix text (default: "Unsubscribe:")
  • The token length (5, 8, or 12 characters)
  • The thank-you page URL shown after unsubscribe

Choosing a token length

Tokens use 62 possible characters (A-Z, a-z, 0-9). The longer the token, the harder it is to guess:

  • 5 characters: around 916 million combinations. Shorter link, easy to type. Fine for most campaigns.
  • 8 characters (default): around 218 trillion combinations. A computer guessing one link per second would take 7 million years on average. Great balance.
  • 12 characters: around 3.2 sextillion combinations (3,200,000,000,000,000,000,000). Essentially unguessable, even with modern computing power. Use when security matters most.

In practice, 8 characters is strong enough for any legitimate use case. A 5-character token is still hard to guess by brute force, and each guess would need to hit our rate-limited servers. Most users should stick with the default.

Why would you use 12? If you are in a highly regulated industry or want maximum protection against bots scraping short URLs, longer tokens give you peace of mind at the cost of two extra characters in each SMS.

Skip unsubscribe footer per campaign

For transactional messages (OTPs, order confirmations, delivery notifications) you can skip the unsubscribe footer on a per-campaign basis. Enable it in the campaign wizard on the message composition step.

Only use this for purely transactional content. Do not use it for marketing messages.

What if I am on Standard or use Brave Managed?

Without unsubscribe functionality, you are responsible for managing opt-outs manually:

  • Keep your consent records up to date in HubSpot
  • Remove contacts who ask to unsubscribe from your lists
  • Respect opt-out requests promptly

To get automated unsubscribe handling, upgrade to Professional and switch to BYOK with your own 46elks account.