Email Preference Center Setup

[Jennifer_Bisho1]

My company is in the process of brainstorming categories and processes for an email preference center, because right now we only have a one-click unsubscribe option.  Few questions that I was hoping someone could help me out with:

-If an email has 3 tags (let's say newsletter, promotion, and cloud technology), but the person only opted in to receive newsletters, will they still receive this email?  Or do they need to be subscribed to all 3 categories/tags to get it?

-We want to subscribe people to our vendor's emails, but feel it would be overwhelming to include 20+ options to select what vendor emails they'd like to receive.  As a workaround, would it make sense to have triggered campaigns setup in the background that could add them to vendor lists to receive certain emails?  Meaning if we have the person select what technologies they are interested in, can we tie a triggered campaign to their selection?  For example, if a person selects that they are interested in cloud/carrier services, can we add them to Cisco email sends?

Thanks!

[Dan_Stevens_ · Accepted solution]

-If an email has 3 tags (let's say newsletter, promotion, and cloud technology), but the person only opted in to receive newsletters, will they still receive this email?  Or do they need to be subscribed to all 3 categories/tags to get it?

You cannot rely on "tags" to define user preferences.  This is a current Marketo limitation - vote here: .  Instead, you need to create custom consent fields like this (this is just a subset of our consent fields):

You will then need to include specific consent filters (we create segmentations for ours - based on the appropriate opt-in field) for every email send (this is an example of an event invitation):

Here's our preference center - for you to view as an example: Avanade - Email Preference Center

[Jennifer_Bisho1]

Hey Dan - gotcha.  We're going to get Marketo consulting hours to help us build this out the right way, so I'm not familiar with how this works yet.  But before we sign the quote, we want to make sure we have these answers so we can get the categories and our strategy in place so we don't waste the hours and are ready to go.

Let's use your preference center for example.  Let's say the email going out is a newsletter and also includes the techs and specs category.  If a person only opted in to receive newsletters, and not techs and specs, can you still send the email to them?  Or do they need to opt into both categories in order to receive it?

[Dan_Stevens_]

Hey Jennifer - in our preference center example, "Techs and Specs" is the name of one of our blogs.  It's not a content-type (or category).  So in this case, as long as "opt-in newsletters" is true, the person will receive that newsletter.  Don't mix topics and content-types - that gets ultra confusing.  Keep it simple - especially since you now will need to include the appropriate filters in all of your smart campaigns where an email is sent.

[Jennifer_Bisho1]

Ahhhh, OK.  I would love to keep it simple as well, but unfortunately we have a lot of vendors/technologies etc., and we are also used to batching and blasting to everyone.  Would it be better to do a 2 layer unsubscribe to try to get more detailed?  Here was our other idea:

-Select what technologies you are interested in.  Options would be POS & Barcode/Payment Services, Unified Communications/ProAV/Telephony, Networking & Security, and Cloud & Carrier Services.
-Then we would ask them what types of emails they are interested in receiving.  Options are newsletters, sales promotions, sweepstakes promotions, accelerated growth/onboarding programs, web seminars, and live events.

Then we would have to categorize our emails and make sure they only fall into one email type category so it doesn't get too crazy.  Does this sound more doable or do you think that would get overly complicated?

[Dan_Stevens_]

This is where a tag-based approach - like the idea Grégoire Michel submitted - would make this so much easier to manage/operationalize.  While your approach is certainly doable, you really need to ensure the process is clearly defined (including the custom fields and potential custom objects) and the appropriate filters are included as appropriate.

[Jennifer_Bisho1]

So true.  As long as it's doable, I'm sure our consultant will show us how we need to setup the campaigns and everything else.  Thanks for your help!

[Sean_Richards]

Hi Dan Stevens,

Why do you have a separate Opt-In and Opt-Out-ALL field?

(This might not be my last question! )

[Dan_Stevens_]

Hi Sean - we use the opt-out-all field as a trigger to automatically deselect any previously selected options.  This also triggers the "unsubscribe" field to TRUE.

[Sean_Richards]

Thanks Dan, I suspected as much. As I am building out and designing our email preference center, I am conscious of future proofing it for GDPR etc.

To this end, I have a couple of other questions, if I may trouble you.

I understand that if we generate new leads through List import (assuming expressed confirm was given) or filled out form and opt in checked that we're compliant. However what about the following scenarios:

a) If a person is created through CRM by a sales rep for a new lead, or a new contact against a customer/prospect account that we're working with?

b) If a key contact under an oppty supplies us a list of people that attended the demo?

c) If a new customer provides us a list of additional project stakeholders (names, titles, emails) when they complete our new customer process?

In these circumstances, what would be the best way for us to operate to be GDPR compliant? Can we and if so to what level can we opt-in these people? Do they require a double opt-in or not, or not allowed to be opted in whatsoever?

Thanks for the information and advise in advance.

Sean