Why did a user receive an email after they unsubscribed, and how do I handle their deletion request?

It can be confusing when a user reports receiving an email after they believe they unsubscribed. This often happens when the user is registered in several systems: unsubscribing in one system does not propagate to their profile in Pushwoosh, or vice versa.

For example, a user newly registered in your Pushwoosh application may trigger a welcome email. When they unsubscribe from that email, their status is updated correctly in Pushwoosh, but subscriptions managed by other services you use are unaffected. Reports of "multiple unsubscribe attempts" usually refer to mail from those other systems.

How to handle user removal requests

1. Unsubscribe the user (standard method)

• What it does: when a user clicks the unsubscribe link in an email, Pushwoosh sets the Unsubscribed Emails tag to true for that address, and they stop receiving marketing email. Transactional emails are not affected and are still delivered.
• Doing it manually: go to Audience → User Explorer, find the user, open the Devices and platforms tab, select the email profile, open the three-dot menu (⋮) in the profile header and choose Unsubscribe from email campaigns. This opts the user out without removing the address.
• Benefit: the profile stays in your system, preserving interaction history, while the user is reliably excluded from future marketing sends.

2. Let users manage categories (preference center)

If you have the email subscription preference center enabled, subscribers can opt out of specific categories instead of everything. Category membership is stored in the Subscribed Email Categories tag. Choosing Unsubscribe from all in the preference center still sets Unsubscribed Emails to true. (The older Unsubscribed Email Categories tag is deprecated.)

3. Delete the data (permanent removal, e.g. GDPR)

Deletion in Pushwoosh is performed per channel profile, not with a single button on the user record:

1. Go to Audience → User Explorer and search by User ID, HWID, email, phone, or token.
2. Open the user and switch to the Devices and platforms tab.
3. Select the channel you want to remove in the left sidebar.
4. Open the three-dot menu (⋮) in the profile header and choose Delete email (for an email address) or Delete device (for other platforms).
5. Repeat for every channel profile linked to that user.

Deleting a platform profile is irreversible and removes all data associated with it. You can also delete devices programmatically with the Device API /deleteDevice method.

Important: if you delete a profile and the person later re-registers, they are treated as a brand new user with default subscription settings, so they could start receiving email again. In most cases leaving them in the unsubscribed state is the more reliable way to guarantee they are not contacted.