Australia · Spam and marketing consent
They unsubscribed - did every marketing system get the message?
An unsubscribe link is only useful if the customer's choice reaches the systems sending the next message. Test the whole process before your next campaign.
A practical reminder from enforcement
ACMA's July 2026 enforcement action included more than 217,000 marketing emails and SMS sent to customers who had unsubscribed from those particular channels. The wider action covered both spam and telemarketing breaches. It is an earlier enforcement example with a current operational lesson, not a new September rule.
A customer may withdraw consent for SMS while retaining email marketing. Your systems need to apply the choice actually made, including a request to stop all marketing, rather than reducing every preference to a single convenient field.
Start with the existing requirements
Australian electronic-marketing rules generally require consent, accurate sender identification and a working unsubscribe method. Consent may be express or, in appropriate circumstances, inferred. Keep evidence of the basis you rely on; possession of an email address is not itself consent.
ACMA says unsubscribe requests must be honoured within five working days. The facility must remain functional for at least 30 days after the message, and must not require account creation, login or extra personal information. Outsourcing the send does not remove the business's responsibilities.
Test the journey, not just the link
- Map the senders. List every email platform, SMS provider, CRM, store-upload process, agency and automated journey that can initiate marketing for your business.
- Use controlled test contacts. Record the initial preferences, unsubscribe from each channel and follow the change through connected systems. Include an all-marketing opt-out where you offer one.
- Challenge the exceptions. Check what happens after an import, a customer-account update, a new purchase or a system migration. Confirm an old list cannot silently overwrite a newer withdrawal.
- Inspect automated sends. Review abandoned-cart, win-back, loyalty and promotional follow-up messages. Determine which are commercial messages and apply the relevant consent and unsubscribe controls.
- Assign an owner and retain the result. Set responsibility for failed synchronisation, vendor escalations and suppression-list reconciliation. Keep a dated record of the test and the correction.
When a mismatch appears
Pause the affected marketing pathway while the team confirms the scope and fixes the cause. Check whether incorrect messages were actually sent, preserve the evidence and assess the appropriate response. Our practical recommendation is to re-test before restarting, including the downstream system that failed.
How Watchdog can help
Watchdog can review consent wording, unsubscribe journeys and marketing procedures, and help teams turn customer preferences into controls that work across systems.