Opt out link in surveys - do you need it? | Experience Community
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Opt out link in surveys - do you need it?

  • September 16, 2026
  • 2 replies
  • 29 views

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Hi All,

 

Please can I have some advice from the community / much more experienced survey / data scientists than myself…

 

I am being challenged by the business that a ‘survey’ opt out link is not necessary for surveys where our reason for sending out is based on legitimate interest.  Is this true?

 

My view is that it is still required because of the following:

Our primary (Post Stay) survey can be sent to the guests through legitimate interest (ie. they booked a stay and agreed to our contract which included a clause that allows us to ask for feedback about their stay).  However we sometimes want to send surveys out which do not relate to a booking they have made (eg it could be about changes to our proposition or their holiday intentions) and so we need to give the guest the option to opt out of future surveys.

 

The point here is ‘future’ as without providing an opt out link will we never know if they want to receive surveys in the future or not, irrespective of whether they relate to a booking or not (which is fine for our business). 

 

I’ve read through various guidelines but this scenario (if it’s legitimate interest do you still need to provide an opt out link) is unclear as to whether it is required for legal reasons (eg GDPR? - perhaps GDPR deals more with Personal Information though?) or best practise reasons.  There is also perhaps another element to think of, are SPAM filters less likely to stop an email if an optout link is included?

 

Any clear guidance on this matter would be really helpful

 

Thanks

 

Rod Pestell

 

2 replies

pamelalbeck
Level 5 ●●●●●
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  • Level 5 ●●●●●
  • September 17, 2026

I agree with your reasoning ​@Rod_Pestell .

I always assumed it was ethical/best practice to have an opt out link.  Are you sending the surveys through the Qualtrics platform?  I did find this information which adds a little more context:

If you remove the opt out link from your email message, you will get a message that says “Messages can't be sent without opt-out links.” above the message editor and you will not be able to send your email. In order to comply with the federal CAN-SPAM Act, Qualtrics will require that you include an opt out link in every email that you send to individuals outside of your organization. There are no exceptions to this requirement when sending emails to individuals outside of your organization.

https://www.qualtrics.com/support/survey-platform/distributions-module/email-distribution/email-distribution-error-messages/#NoOptOutLink

I would also say from a customer point of view, I would be very upset if I wasn’t able to opt out of communications that I no longer wanted/needed.  I just had to do this myself!


vgayraud
QPN Level 8 ●●●●●●●●
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  • QPN Level 8 ●●●●●●●●
  • September 18, 2026

Hi,

You probably have a legal department that can clarify this for the business, but you’re most probably right.

LI (and consent) requires an opt-out process in most markets. What wouldn’t require one would be contract or legal communications. For example, someone cannot opt-out of communication containing information about a booking. But if you bundle an invitation to a survey about the booking in that message, you’d need to include an opt-out mechanism.

On the deliverability aspect, it matters much more than used to. Since 2024, major actors like Gmail and Yahoo require senders above a certain volume threshold to support one-click unsubscribes via headers. Without a visible opt-out link, the only exit a client has is to “report spam”, which in the end will damage your domain reputation even more.