Use unsubscribed or marketing suspended when pending opt-in confirmation

Pavel_Plachky
Level 5

Use unsubscribed or marketing suspended when pending opt-in confirmation

Hello,

I would like to tap the collective wisdom of the community to weigh pros/cons about how to handle people who did not yet confirmed their subscription. In several cases, for example double opt-in, we want to limit the marketing to operational emails before the person clicked on confirmation email. We can use two Marketo fields for this use case:

  • Marketing Suspended
  • Unsubscribed

Which one in your experience is better? I have seen Marketing Suspended used often, but Grégoire Michel​ hinted in his idea   to link Unsubscribed to Opt-In field. I would be interested in learning what worked for you.

Many thanks,

Pavel

3 REPLIES 3
Grégoire_Miche2
Level 10

Re: Use unsubscribed or marketing suspended when pending opt-in confirmation

Hi Pavel,

There are 2 ways to look at this:

  • You might want to have the opt-in and unsubscribe fields to be always in sync. This will reduce the risk for errors and non compliance. Since the idea you pointed above has not been implemented, what we do more and more is to implement it at form level, with some JS. See Consent to marketing communications - trigger campaign
  • You might decide you do not want to sync these 2 fields. This means that Opt-in filter have to be added to all you campaigns, giving a lot of responsibility to your end users. The advantage of this approach is that it leaves some leeway when you need to send some communications covered by to the legitimate interest or existing relationship rules (such a production information to your existing customers). But some say that in this case, you can still use some operational emails.

-Greg

Pavel_Plachky
Level 5

Re: Use unsubscribed or marketing suspended when pending opt-in confirmation

Thanks, Greg for the suggestion of handling of opt-in on forms. This my come handy. Right now I am considering a different use case, when we get indication of person is opted in in Salesforce, but cannot consider him opted in, until he or she clicks on confirmation email (and maybe even confirms on a landing page). In order to avoid the need to use opt-in field in every smart campaign, I want to keep the person either unsubscribed or marketing suspended until they confirm. I want to know which is better - unsubscribed or marketing suspended?

Many thanks,

Pavel

Grégoire_Miche2
Level 10

Re: Use unsubscribed or marketing suspended when pending opt-in confirmation

Hi Pavel,

I would use Unsubscribe by default for what comes from SFDC, for compliance reasons: Usually, if the opt-in request comes from SFDC, you will hardly be able to log a proof of the request in case you need to prove it. Therefore, unsubscribed by default and a confirmation from the lead with a form entry.

-Greg