Building an email preference center

Anonymous
Not applicable

Building an email preference center

In this email preference center, I'm using a newly created Email Subscription field (string type) that allows users to modify their email preferences for four types of email promotions (two newsletters, offers, third-party). Yes, I purposely want to have one subscription field vs four separate fields for each type of subscription. 

Then I have a basic form with check-boxes for those four email types, some javascript, an unsubscribe from all check-box (Marketo's default), as well as the Email Address field. The URL is page.domain.com/unsubscribe.html?mkt_unsubscribe=1&mkt_tok=##MKT_TOK##

My question is:
- How do I get the form to show user's current subscriptions (assuming it's being accessed from one of our emails)?

I was able to get the email address to display properly, but can't get the form to show the email subscription choices. Perhaps there is no way to pre-fill user's subscriptions unless each promotion type uses its own field.

I also want to use the same form for all the new users to opt-in into our emails. My assumption is that if a new user is accessing the Center from our website (not from emails), then, initially, all the form fields (email, checkboxes) will be blank. Is this correct?

Appriciate all your help and suggestions.
 
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7 REPLIES 7
Becky_Miner
Level 3

Re: Building an email preference center

How do you currently have their subscriptions set up?  Prior to Marketo, we have been managing our subscriptions via SFDC Campaigns.  So, to set everything up for our Email Preferences Center, I ran some batch campaigns in Marketo that went like this:

Smart List: Used the filter "Member of SFDC Campaign"
Flow: Change Data Value (in our case, we changed the value of "US Newsletter Opt-In" to be True)

And then we ran all leads through this once.  If someone was on our US Newsletter campaign in Salesforce, this marked the field in Marketo as True.  So when they go to their preferences center now, it shows up as a checked box.

Hope this helps!

Becky
Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: Building an email preference center

The fields can be pre-populated with current selections.

Having a single text field for four types of email promotions requires the inverse logic used for the submission, reading the field from the database and then using JavaScript or jQuery to split back into each individual selection to populate the check boxes..

Most of that JavaScript/jQuery is already defined for the submission. 

Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: Building an email preference center

Thank you for your responses. We've decided to simplify things a bit and proceed with only three selections (two newsletters and one promotional/special offers) that will each use its own checkbox. 

I understand how to pre-check those boxes on the back-end, but how do I ensure that subscribers see it in the preference center when clicking to it from one of their emails? Is there anything that needs to be appended to the URL or is there some special javascript/jquery, and if so, where can I find them? Thanks so much.

Rashmi_Bijai
Level 2

Re: Building an email preference center

Hi Gennadiy

we are facing the same challenge. Were you able to figure out a solution to show the user's current preference on the form?
Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: Building an email preference center

Hi Rashami,
just use "checkboxes" for the different types and set Form Pre-Filled to "enabled".

Then whatever is set will directly be shown to be customer and be pre-filled.

Best regards

Steffen
Rashmi_Bijai
Level 2

Re: Building an email preference center

I just heard from Marketo support. They are checking to see if the pre fill works for boolean values and check boxes. I will keep update this post once they figure this out.
Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: Building an email preference center

Did this get sorted??
If anyone has an update, could they kindly share please?