Marketing Outreach Deduplication & Unsubscribe

Overview

When sending marketing outreach emails, BlueClerk automatically prevents duplicate sends to the same lead and respects unsubscribe requests. Deduplication uses multiple signals (email, phone, website, company name) to identify duplicate leads, while the unsubscribe system lets leads opt out with one click.

How Deduplication Works

Multiple Deduplication Strategies

BlueClerk prevents sending to the same lead multiple times using:

• Email normalization - Strips whitespace, lowercases email addresses
• Phone normalization - Compares last 10 digits only
• Website normalization - Strips protocol and www prefix, compares hostnames
• Company/city fingerprints - Hash of normalized company name + city
• Addressless signatures - Hash of company name, city, trade, and website combined

Cooldown Period

• 90-day cooldown - Leads can't be emailed again for 90 days after last contact
• Tracked in database - lastEmailed timestamp enforced server-side
• Skipped leads counted - Reports show how many leads were skipped due to cooldown

Unsubscribe Support

Automatic Unsubscribe Links

Every marketing email includes:

• One-click unsubscribe URL - /api/lead-unsubscribe?leadId=[id]&token=[token]
• Verified token - Uses HMAC-SHA256 signature to prevent forged unsubscribe requests
• List-Unsubscribe headers - RFC 8058 compliant for one-click email client support

What Happens When Someone Unsubscribes

1. Lead status changes - Marked as "unsubscribed" in database
2. Removed from future campaigns - Excluded from all outreach queries
3. No more emails - Lead will never receive marketing emails again
4. Confirmation page - Lead sees success message after clicking unsubscribe

Outreach Stats

When running outreach campaigns, you'll see:

• Selected - Number of leads chosen for outreach
• Sent - Successfully delivered emails
• Failed - Email send failures (invalid address, SES errors)
• Skipped (cooldown) - Leads emailed within last 90 days
• Skipped (duplicates) - Leads identified as duplicates by deduplication rules

Tips

• Review skipped counts - High duplicate counts may indicate scraper is pulling same leads repeatedly
• Check cooldown skips - Helps identify how many leads are being recycled too quickly
• Monitor unsubscribe rate - High unsubscribe rates may indicate poor targeting or messaging

Questions

Q: Can I manually mark a lead as unsubscribed? A: Not yet - currently only automated via unsubscribe links. Manually change lead status to "unsubscribed" in database if needed.

Q: What happens if I email a lead who already unsubscribed? A: The outreach system automatically filters out unsubscribed leads - they won't appear in the selection query.

Q: Can leads re-subscribe after opting out? A: No - once unsubscribed, the lead is permanently excluded from marketing emails.