Question: I have several prospects that are automatically unsubscribed from my email lists without them actually taking any action or clicking the unsubscribe link. Why does this happen and how can I prevent it?

The answer here is two-fold.

1. Fix the immediate problem
2. Prevent it from happening again

Fix

1. To fix the automatic unsubscribe event you first have to export the prospects that are affected.
2. Then in Pardot, edit the affected prospects records by changing their email addresses i.e. change This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Do this for all the affected records. In our case it was just a few internal addresses.
3. Now delete these prospects from Pardot.
4. Next, import the original list that was exported in step 1. This will recreate the prospect records with all their details, but associate them with a fresh prospect id in the Pardot database.
5. The automatic unsubscribe problem should now be fixed

Note: If you have actual prospects to whom this is happening, I would suggest getting a fresh opt-in from them after running the fix above. Just to make sure they actually do want to receive your comms.

Prevent it from happening

• Make sure your domain key policies and SPF records are up to date and verified.
• Whitelist the Pardot sending ip address. This will prevent most issues with email server spam traps and auto unsubscribes
• Never publish a list e-mail on the internet. I've seen this happen where email content was published that included an unsubscribe link. The unsubscribe link is associated with the original recipient. The effect was that the unsubscribe action for this individual was tripped every time a bot crawled the page where the email appeared.