Topic
A topic is a category a reader can subscribe to on its own: product news, billing notices, a weekly digest. Topics turn unsubscribe from a single switch into a choice, which keeps people on your list who only wanted to leave one conversation. They are also what a preference page is built from, without asking a reader to explain themselves.
At a glance
- Category
- Consent
- Held on
- The contact, as one subscription per topic
- Used by
- Segments, broadcasts and the preference page
- Public topics
- Listed on the hosted preference page for the reader to choose
- Distinct from
- The account-wide unsubscribe, which stops all marketing
How it works
You define the topics you send, and each contact carries a subscription state for each of them. A broadcast is addressed to a segment that can filter on those states, so a campaign about billing changes reaches the people who asked for billing notices and nobody else. The hosted preference page lists your public topics and lets a reader turn each on or off, which writes back to the contact without any code of yours running.
Why it matters
A single unsubscribe switch makes every departure total, so a reader annoyed by one weekly digest leaves everything including the messages they wanted. Topics convert that into a smaller decision, which keeps the relationship and reduces complaints at the same time — a reader who can turn one thing off rarely reaches for the spam button. They also make consent specific, which is easier to defend than a general permission to write. And because the choice lives on the contact rather than on a campaign, it survives every later change of tool, template or team.
Example
A company defines three topics: product news, billing notices and a weekly digest. A reader who finds the digest too frequent opens the preference page from a footer link and turns just that one off. They remain subscribed to product news, they still receive billing notices, and the next digest excludes them. Nothing was lost except the mail they did not want.
Common mistakes
- 01Defining topics that describe your teams rather than the reader's interests, which asks people to guess what they are choosing.
- 02Sending a message to everybody because it feels important, which ignores the choice the reader made and invites a complaint.
- 03Creating so many topics that the preference page becomes a form nobody completes.
- 04Treating a topic unsubscribe as an account-wide one, which removes people from mail they explicitly kept.
In Rasket
A contact holds a subscription for each topic, and your public topics are listed on the hosted preference page. Broadcasts
Related terms
Frequently asked questions
Is a topic the same as a list?
Close, but a topic is a property of the contact rather than a separate collection of addresses. That means one contact record holds every choice they have made, instead of the same person existing on four lists.
What happens if somebody unsubscribes from everything?
The contact is marked unsubscribed and marketing stops regardless of individual topics. Transactional mail such as a receipt or a password reset continues, because that is a different kind of message.
Should every topic be public?
No. Public topics appear on the preference page for readers to manage, while an internal one can exist for your own segmentation without being presented as a choice.
Last updated 16 September 2026.
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