Subscribe and unsubscribe by e-mail

You can simply handle subscriptions through e-mails, gathering them all to a folder using rules and using a couple of AppleScripts we wrote for adding or deleting addresses from a Mac OS X Mail folder. They are called 'Adding recipients from Mac OS X Mail' and 'Deleting recipients from Mac OS X Mail'. Those scripts come with MaxBulk distribution, inside the example/AppleScript/Mac OS X Mail import folder and are also accessible from both the import menu and import button. They are very easy to modify if you need to and automatically process a given Mail folder and takes the From and Reply-To headers using their contents to add/remove the addresses from the currently selected MaxBulk list.

Also note that some users have several addresses and sometimes forwards so the e-mail used when replying will not always match the one used for receiving your message. The trick here is to add a [E-mail Address] tag to your unsubscribe link this way:

mailto:[email protected]?Subject=Unsubscribe&Reply-To=[E-mail Address]

The [E-mail Address] will be replaced at delivery time with each recipient address so if one of them decides to unsubscribe the Reply-To header will contain the address you originally used. As my script process this header as well you will be 100% sure that you are removing the right addresses. If you don't want to use that header just use the subject or the body modifying the script accordingly. An example could be:

If you decide to use the subject:
mailto:[email protected]?Subject=Unsubscribe%20[E-mail Address]

If you decide to use the body
mailto:[email protected]?Subject=Unsubscribe&Body=Unsubscribe%20[E-mail Address]

Note that you should never use spaces inside this URL but '%20' codes to avoid breaking the link on recipient mail reader. Also the first mailto argument is always preceded with a '?' mark and then '&' for the others.

Hope this information will help you build a solid subscription system.