Manage contact communication preferences and unsubscribes
Allowing your contacts to control the emails they receive is crucial for good engagement and is also a legal requirement. White Fuse offers two key mechanisms for this:
- Communication types (allowing contacts to opt in or out of specific lists).
- Global unsubscribe (adding a contact to a central suppression list to block all broadcast emails).
1. Communication types
Create communication types to allow your contacts to opt in to receive specific categories of email broadcasts from you.
Create communication types
- Go to Settings > Communications.
- Create a new communication type and give it a clear, self-explanatory name.
- Choose whether to display your communication type on custom forms, event order forms, membership subscription forms or donation forms. For example, if some options are relevant only to members, you may choose to show them only on membership subscription forms.
- Click Create.
What communication types to create?
Most membership organisations offer a small number of clearly labelled communication types such as:
- Monthly newsletter
- Fundraising appeals
- Volunteering opportunities
- Upcoming events
People can then opt in to some types of communication and opt out of others.
2. Global Unsubscribes
In addition to granular communication types, there is a central suppression list for global unsubscribes, which can be viewed at Reports > Suppressed emails.
When an email address is added to this suppression list, the contact is bypassed for all event and segment broadcasts. They will only continue to receive essential system emails, such as password resets or membership renewal reminders.
3. How can users manage their preferences?
Users can manage both communication types and their unsubscribe settings in the following ways:
From an email
The footer of all your email broadcasts includes links to either Manage Preferences or Unsubscribe. Both links go to a preferences page where the user can choose to either change their selected communication types or unsubscribe entirely.
User account area
Users can log in and navigate to My account > Communications. Here they will see a preferences page where they can choose to either change their selected communication types or unsubscribe entirely.
If a person is already unsubscribed and wishes to start receiving broadcasts again, this is the only way they can remove their email from the suppression list.
Forms
Forms provide only a limited way for people to change their communication preferences as they can only add communication type subscriptions, not remove them. Submitting a form with a communication type left blank will not remove this preference from the person if they have previously added it. To remove communication types, they must use one of the two methods above.
4. Sending email broadcasts
It is important that you respect your users' communication preferences when you send broadcasts. You should almost always include a communication type condition in the segments that you use for broadcasting purposes.
The only exception to this is where you are confident that the segment will want to receive the broadcast message irrespective of their specified communication types.
Note: You do not need to manually filter out users who have globally unsubscribed. The system will automatically check the central suppression list and skip sending to them during your event and segment broadcasts.