Collecting & Sending to Contacts With Email Preferences 🎬

Last updated
20210728

Article type
Step-by-step

Applies to
Starter, Business, Pro-Marketer

Special contents
Video 

Video

This video covers a number of topics from the various how-to guides below, including configuring your list preferences, setting up your Preferences form (from 0m51s), and sending to contacts who have list preferences set (from 1m54s).

Details

Email preferences are a great way to allow your contacts to choose the types of emails they want to receive from you. For example: Newsletters, Events, Promotions.

It's also a great way to potentially retain a contact who is about to unsubscribe - by allowing them to alter their preferences instead of unsubscribing completely - and thus potentially receive less email from you.

You can also have preferences that are hidden from your contacts. This is great for organising your contacts into certain internal-only categories, or 'tagging' your contacts to receive certain content that you don't want them to be able to opt-into themselves (ie. the preference is set by staff at the time of import, or manually in the system, but the contact themselves can never see the preference in order to opt into, or opt out of it).

In this guide, we'll explain how to configure the preferences that are available to your contacts, how to setup the preferences form, how to apply preferences to existing contacts and finally - how to send to contacts who have certain email preferences enabled.

How-to Guide

This article contains a number of guides for various related topics. Click below to jump ahead to a particular guide.

• Configure Your List Preference Options
• Setup Your Preferences Form
• Display the Update Preferences Option in Your Email Footer
• Add the Preferences Option To Your Subscription / Update Profile Forms
• Hide a Particular Preference From a Form
• Link Your Preferences Form To Your Unsubscribe Form
• Set Some Preferences on Your Existing Contacts
• Send to Contacts With List Preferences
• Automation Example: Ask Contacts To Set Preferences Shortly After Subscribing (this goes to a separate article)

Configure Your List Preference Options

1. Log into your account and click the cog icon at the top right.
2. Select List Preferences from the sidebar.
3. By default, three preferences have been created for you already (Newsletters, Promotions, Events), but you can rename or remove these if you wish - as well as add new options to suit your needs. You can also re-order the preferences by clicking & dragging the gripper to the left of each one. Configure this area as required.
   
4. Once finished, click Save Changes.

Setup Your Preferences Form

Once you've configured your preferences as per the section above, now it's time to check setup or check your Preferences form. This is also covered in the video above, from 0m51s.

1. Select Lists and Forms from the sidebar.
2. Double-click on the relevant list, to go into forms view. All of the forms attached to your selected list are now shown.
3. Select the Preferences tab to open your preferences form for editing.
4. Ensure the Update Preferences sub-tab is selected, as shown.
   
5. With your update preferences form now open for editing, you can redesign the form as required - such as adding a logo, changing the colours, adding additional text and so on.
   Design & Customise the Appearance of a Form
6. Once finished, click Save.

If you have multiple lists, you'll need to repeat this process for each of your lists. Note that you can also hide certain preferences from your forms.

Display the Update Preferences Option in Your Email Footer

Allow your contacts to adjust their preferences at any time by adding an Update Preferences link to the footer of your emails.

1. Select Messages from the sidebar.
2. Locate the message in question and click the ellipsis (...) over on the right.
3. Select Footer details.
4. Under the Manage preferences link section, enable the checkbox for Use this Manage preferences link.
5. Click Save changes.
6. Repeat this step for other messages which you wish to enable this setting for, or contact our Support team to get the option added to your footer permanently for all lists.

Add the Preferences Option To Your Subscription / Update Profile Forms

Now that you've setup everything, it might be a good idea to add a Preferences component to your Subscription and / or Update Profile forms - so your contacts can set their preferences right then and there at the point of subscription, or on the Update Profile form (if you use it).

1. Select Lists and Forms from the sidebar.
2. Double-click on the desired list, to open forms view for that list.
3. Navigate to your Subscription or Update Profile form.
4. From the Components panel to the right hand side, click Add next to the Preferences option to add this to your form. You can optionally make it a required field, so that your contact must select at least one option. This may be a good idea, because if they don't select anything and you only ever send to users with preferences, then they'll never get any emails from you.
   

Note that you can also hide certain preferences from your forms.

Hide a Particular Preference From a Form

Having hidden preferences is great for organising your contacts into certain internal-only categories, or 'tagging' your contacts to receive certain content that you don't want them to be able to opt-into themselves (ie. the preference is set by staff at the time of import, or manually in the system, but the contact themselves can never see the preference in order to opt into, or opt out of it).

1. Select Lists and Forms from the sidebar.
2. Double-click on the desired list, to open forms view for that list.
3. Navigate to your desired form (generally this would be either one or all of your Subscription, Update Profile and / or Update Prefernces forms).
4. On your form, select the Update Preferences component. 
5. Over to the right, locate the Design tab and uncheck any preferences you don't want to display on the form.
   
6. Click Save.

Link Your Preferences Form To Your Unsubscribe Form

If you're using the preferences function and are driving contacts to the update preference form when they click the unsubscribe link, it's always a good idea to link the update preferences form to the unsubscribe form.

That way, you'll remain spam compliant by giving your users a way to opt-out completely. We've provided an example below.

1. Select Lists and Forms from the sidebar.
2. Double-click on the desired list, to open forms view for that list.
3. Select your update profile form by clicking on Update Profile.
4. Edit the form and add some text to it, to describe its purpose and include some information about unsubscribing completely.
5. Highlight the text that you wish to link to the unsubscribe form and click the world / chain (insert link) icon from the floating toolbar.
6. Select Web Forms from the left side, then select your relevant unsubscribe form.
   
7. Click Insert Link
8. When done, save your form.

Set Some Preferences on Your Existing Contacts

If you've been using our system for a while but have only just started using List Preferences, you may wish to set preferences for your existing contacts.

Bulk Update Contacts With List Preferences

Send to Contacts With List Preferences

Once you have contacts with preferences set against their records, you can start sending your different types of emails contacts who wish to receive that type of communication. This is also covered in the video above, from 1m54s.

1. When sending an email and selecting the recipients of your send, choose the Advanced Selection option.
   
2. Configure your search as follows, and click any of the preferences you'd like to include in this email send.
   
3. Click Next. Now, when you send your email, it will be received by contacts who have any of those preferences set against their record.