Handling Global Unsubscribes for leads who sign up again

[Christina_Dearm]

We are a publishing company and we have opt-outs specific to certain digital publications as well as a global opt-out option. We utilize Marketo forms, Opt-InMonster, Facebook, and website ads to gain sign-ups for our various digital publications (eNewsletters). We have over 30 digital offerings via email.

Our footers take the lead to a preferences page, where they have the option to either opt-out of a specific publication or, to globally unsubscribe from everything we send. On the back end each field is separate, and a global opt-out does not change other opt-in field values. The reason is that often, our audience will globally unsubscribe and then call us to complain they are not receiving their publications and ask us to start sending them again except for some specific thing they don't want anymore. This sort of thing happens daily, we have an older audience and they are often technologically challenged. If we changed all of the possible items we offer to an opt-out value, we would have a very hard time switching their subscriptions back on when they called us to complain.

We recently noticed that some people who did actually globally opt out in the past have started signing up for eNewsletter via Opt-InMonster widgets, and we are at a bit of a loss as to how to handle those. Because of how we handle global opt outs, if we opt a lead back IN globally, they would immediately start receiving all their subscriptions again and we aren't sure if that's really best practice.

Does anyone have any thoughts on how to handle these types of opt-ins? How can we improve our process overall? I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts.

[Devraj_Grewal]

Christina,

What I would suggest is researching a subscription center, the Community can be searched for many ideas. Essentially, only if the person has unsubscribed from all communication will they be "Unsubscribed" True. If they choose to unsubscribe from eNewsletters, for example, you can create a custom field "Unsubscribed from eNewsletter" and mark them True. Then next time an eNewsletter is sent out, bring in that custom field in the smart list to make sure you suppress against anyone who has unsubscribed from eNewsletters.

As for those who have opted-out globally and then opted-in to a specific communication (ex. eNewsletter), then you can run a flow to change Unsubscribe to False and then mark all other unsubscribe fields to False except eNewsletter.

[Christina_Dearm]

We actually do have a subscription center in place already: http://Preferences.FarmJournal.com/Newsletter-Page.html

We also have a preferences center which would show your current subscriptions and allow you to unsubscribe from some or all of them and there is also a global unsubscribe option at the bottom: http://Preferences.FarmJournal.com/Preferences-Page.html

Perhaps this visual helps to see the number of items we are working with here?

[Darrell_Alfons2 · Accepted solution]

What if you build a process where:

If someone has unsubcribed in the past, and then the they re-subscribe, a trigger email goes out asking them to review the preference center again to select which communications they would like to receive.

This way you put the onus on the users that are opting in and opting out rather than yourself.

[Christina_Dearm]

That's an idea!! I like it! Thanks Darrell Alfonso​

[Darrell_Alfons2]

nice! let me know how it goes!