Managing preferences vs implied interest

[Anonymous]

We're in the process of designing a welcome program which involves reviewing our preferences centre. The idea is that people will receive a welcome email and we'll ask them to let us know who they are and what they want to receive from us - so capturing both their interest in email/communication type (events, services, webinars etc) but also actual sector interest (related to our specific offering).

Scenario: we often mark someone as being 'interested' in a sector if they engage with content related to that sector in a certain way - i.e. clicks 3 x email and fills out 1 form for example. What if a person goes to our subscription centre and has said they are not interested in 'x' sector, but their behaviour implies they are? We'd mark them as interested in 'x' sector due to rules stated above... Is this wrong? Does any one have any best practices around this? Don't want to over complicate things but feel we should be respecting people's wishes if they have actively told us what they want to receive.

[Anonymous]

Hi Carly - we do something very similar via our preference center, but we also know there are some "implied behaviors" we can use for our email targeting. Any topic preferences will override implied behaviors once an individual fills in our preference center details. If we see new interests arise based on "implied behaviors", we will target that as well and we send out the preference center email once a quarter to ensure our contacts have updated their preferences based on any new interests.

Here's a link at our preference center if it helps illustrate how we follow rules similar to what you've discussed

[Anonymous]

Thanks Tabitha - so when you say override, if they have previously shown implied behaviours, different boxes might be checked because you've assigned that 'interest'? But if they then come on to manage their preferences and change something, it won't be changed back? If that's the case, what happens if in the future they express interest in something they've previously unchecked? Would you still ignore that then? Or are you using 2 sets of fields to track implied interest and 'opted in' interest?

Hope that makes sense! Thanks again.

[Anonymous]

Hi Carly - yes we are managing implied v. expressed interest in separate fields. Both are multi-select picklists so we are able to track any additions (or removals) from the expressed interest field (which comes from our preference center). Does that answer your question?

Also - can you tag me in your next response? I didn't see this last time! Thanks!

[Dory_Viscoglio]

Hi Carly, if someone has visited your preferences page and explicitly opted out of receiving specific types of communication, then I would not assume that they want to receive those types of communications just because they visited some webpages. If they fill out a form, I'd be sure to have explicit language stating that filling the form will put them onto a list where they will receive similar types of communication.

Tabitha, great preference center! I'd be curious (if you don't mind sharing) what kind of conversion rates do you see on that page? Also, I like the idea of a quarterly mailing asking people to update their preferences. This gives people an open door to get more or less from you as they please! I'm sure this has resulted in lower unsubscribe rates from individual emails.

[Anonymous]

Thanks Dory! OK I'll need to get some advice on the wording - makes sense.

[Anonymous]

Yes! We've had success with this preference center, especially as we look to expand our communications outside of North America. Right now ~8% of those who fill out the preference center form choose to "opt down" instead of "opt out". We are working on ways to increase that number - please share ideas if you have any!