Unsubscribe & Privacy
The unsubscribe link, suppressed addresses, and WordPress's personal data export and erase tools.
Recovery emails reach people who haven't bought from you yet, so they have to be easy to stop and respectful of personal data. ShapedRecover builds this in: every email can be unsubscribed from in one click, and shopper data works with the export and erase tools WordPress already gives you. This page explains what a shopper sees, what you can do when someone asks about their data, and how long anything is kept.
The unsubscribe link
Every recovery email carries this line, at the end unless you move it:
Don't want these reminders? Unsubscribe
Only the word Unsubscribe is a link. The line is small and light grey, so it doesn't compete with your "complete your purchase" button, but it's always there.
- You can reword it per campaign, or move it in the email, with the Unsubscribe block in the editor. See Email Editor.
- You can't remove it. If a campaign's email has no unsubscribe line, ShapedRecover adds one at the end when it's sent.
- Mail apps get a one-click unsubscribe too. Every email carries the standard unsubscribe headers, so Gmail, Apple Mail and others can show their own Unsubscribe button next to the sender. It does the same thing as the link.
An easy unsubscribe isn't just polite. A shopper who can't find it marks the email as spam instead, and spam reports hurt the delivery of every email your store sends.
The unsubscribe link is separate from the recovery link. It never restores a cart, and it never expires.
The unsubscribe page
Clicking Unsubscribe opens a simple page on your site with your store's name and one question, with the shopper's address partly hidden:
Stop cart reminder emails to ma***@example.com?
with an Unsubscribe button. After they click it:
You are unsubscribed. You will get no more reminders about your cart.
Why a button, and not unsubscribe-on-click? Many email security tools open every link in an incoming message to check it for danger. If merely opening the link unsubscribed someone, those tools would unsubscribe shoppers who never asked to. Only the button, or the mail app's own one-click unsubscribe, does it.
A link that's been tampered with shows "This unsubscribe link is not valid." The page is never served from a page cache.
What unsubscribing does
Once an address is unsubscribed, ShapedRecover never emails it again, from any campaign, for any cart, now or later.
- Emails are skipped, not deleted. Each email that would have gone to that address is recorded as skipped, with the reason "unsubscribed". You'll see it in the cart's timeline in the Cart Drawer, and Send Now reports "Not sent: unsubscribed".
- Carts are still captured. If the shopper comes back and abandons another cart, it still shows in your Abandoned tab and your figures. It just never gets an email.
- A logged-in customer's saved consent is withdrawn, so their carts aren't tracked from the cart page until they next reach the checkout. See Consent Checkbox.
- The address is kept as a one-way hash: a scrambled fingerprint that can recognise the address when it shows up again, but can't be turned back into it. That's how ShapedRecover can remember not to email someone without keeping their address in readable form.
The unsubscribe list is never cleared by your retention settings, so an unsubscribe really is permanent. There's no screen to view or edit it yet, so an unsubscribe can't be undone from the admin.
Exporting a shopper's data
When a shopper asks what you hold about them, use WordPress's own tool: Tools → Export Personal Data. Enter their email address and send the request as usual. ShapedRecover's part of the export is the group Cart Recovery.
It finds the carts with that email address, plus the carts of the WordPress user who has that address (a customer may have used a different email on some carts). For each, the export includes:
| What | Details |
|---|---|
| Each cart | Status, email, name, when it was captured, last activity, contents (product names and quantities), total, and the consent: when it was given, the checkbox text, and where. |
| Each recovery email for those carts | The campaign name, its status, and when it was sent. |
| Saved consent (logged-in customers) | When it was given and the checkbox text, or "Consent declined" with its date. |
| Unsubscribe | "Unsubscribed from cart reminders" with its date, if the address is on the list. |
Erasing a shopper's data
When a shopper asks to be forgotten, use Tools → Erase Personal Data. ShapedRecover erases:
- Every cart for that email or that user, including open ones still in recovery, with their recovery emails and links.
- Except recovered carts, which are anonymised instead: the email, name, account link and consent record are cleared, but the order link, total, products and dates stay. That keeps the sale in Recovered Sales and your Dashboard without anything that identifies the person.
- The saved consent or "no" on their account.
One thing is deliberately kept: if they unsubscribed, the hashed unsubscribe entry stays. The erase report says so: "The address is kept as a one-way hash so it is never emailed again." Erasing it would let the address be emailed again, which is the opposite of what they asked for.
Coupons and orders aren't part of ShapedRecover's erase
A generated coupon is restricted to the shopper's email, so the address is stored on the coupon itself. The erase tool doesn't touch coupons; a used or expired one is removed by Coupon Cleanup, or you can delete it in Marketing → Coupons. The shopper's WooCommerce orders and account are handled by WooCommerce and WordPress, not ShapedRecover.
How long data is kept
You don't need to clean up by hand. Every day, ShapedRecover removes old data from carts that are finished: Recovered, Ordered or Lost. Carts still in recovery (Shopping or Recoverable) and carts with an order awaiting payment are never removed, however old.
| Setting | What happens after it | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Recoverable Carts | Lost and Ordered carts are deleted with their emails and links. Recovered carts are anonymised, so every recovered sale stays in your reports. | 90 days (or your Mark Cart as Lost After, if that's longer) |
| Send History | The recovery emails of finished carts are deleted. The sales they recovered stay. | 180 days |
Each period counts back from the cart's last activity. Both are in Settings → Data & Storage → How Long We Keep Things, along with Delete Old Records Now for an immediate clear-out. See Data & Storage.
The unsubscribe list is never purged, and generated coupons follow Coupon Cleanup rather than these periods.
When you delete the plugin, Delete Everything on Uninstall decides whether all of this goes with it. See Uninstalling & Data.
Where to go next
- Consent Checkbox: how shoppers agree to reminders in the first place.
- Data & Storage: the retention settings in full.
- Email Editor: reword the unsubscribe line.