Unintentionally unsubscribing

[SanfordWhiteman]

Management know them better than you & I, I trust their questioning.

Total nonsense, but whatever makes them feel better I guess... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Marie_Ligier]

Hi René,

Agree with Sanford that the radio buttons are best rather than assuming the reasons why the field is unchecked.

However I've had a similar issue with forms that were NOT on a subscription page: events registrations, content download...

---> we still wanted to offer the ability to subscribe but didn't want people unintentionally unsubscribing by leaving the box unchecked. I also didn't want to use radio buttons and force the contact to take action.

The only way I found to address that is duplicating the fields:

1- you've got a field "opt-in FRONT" which you use on all your forms

2- you've got the field "opt-in BACK" which you only use in the background

3- you've got the field "opt-out"

When a contact fills out a form to download a whitepaper:

- If they leave the field "opt-in FRONT" unchecked: nothing happens.

- If they check the field "opt-in FRONT": a trigger campaign also checks the "opt-in BACK" field and unchecks the "opt-out" field.

When we launch a campaign, we use the "opt-in BACK" field to target contacts, and the "opt-out" field to exclude them.

Just sharing in case this would be useful to anyone as it kept me up at night for some time

Marie

[René_Kamine]

Hi Marie

Yes, you get it!!!  Thank you for sharing. Like you I want to also extend this over to gated content on the website but forcing an action is not ideal. I'll look into your solution further & may reach out directly for any questions if that is OK.

Thanks again

[Dan_Stevens_]

Is this out of the box functionality of MKTO to automatically unsubscribe people if the box is left unchecked to subscribe

Usually, this checkbox is a custom boolean field.  Not checking the box (or unchecking it) will not automatically UNSUBSCRIBE that user.  You would need to have some sort of workflow setup to make that happen.  For us, this field is called "opt-in".  We use this field as one of our primary filters before any email is sent out.  If it's FALSE, they are not necessarily unsubscribed (and most are not).  They just haven't explicitly given us their opt-in consent yet.

Here's an example of the opt-in checkbox on our contact-us form:

[SanfordWhiteman]

In this case "unsubscribe" can't mean the system Unsubscribe field is set to true, but instead "unsubscribe" is used to mean "set Opted-In to false".

[Dan_Stevens_]

Good point in clarifying that, Sandy.  I was referring to the system unsubscribe in my comment.

[René_Kamine]

Hi Dan

I use a similar filter in all email communications eg Marketing Optin. I have that optin checkbox in the form in question mapped to that boolean Marketing Optin field. I'll look into a workflow as you mentioned that complies with our spam act here in Australia. Marie Ligier​ 's a sounds promising. I'd like to use a similar process for gated content on our website where an option to subscribe is available. If left unchecked & that person is already subscribed, I don't want to unsubscribe as that may not be their intention.

Thanks again for taking the time.

[KellyJoHorton]

I use a string field for opt-ins and opt-outs in a "Checkboxes" (plural) field type that writes a True, False or NULL, depending on what the person chooses. You always want to know if someone has answered Yes, No or never answered the question at all (NULL).