Email Opt-Out/Unsubscribe

Emma Sullivan

Hi everyone! How does your organization handle unsubscribing and/or opting out of emails? We are building a new website and will be incorporating a new unsubscribe/opt-out structure.

JoAnn Strommen

We are also in process of major website update.  We have been discussing the opt out too.  We are developing a list of various categories so individuals can opt out of some but won't be automatically opted out of all. 

Elizabeth Hoff

Hi- 

I created a custom tag aka attributes for do not email and add that to the donors record. In the comments section of custom field I add the note ‘opted out of emails’. You can set these up for a variety of things or levels. I keep the email on record in case our development officer wants to reach out. When I pull reports I always make sure to add any custom fields to query/export so I can remove those donors from the lists if we are sending emails. 

liz 

Dan Snyder

Hi Emma Sullivan‍, I think the recommendations of JoAnn Strommen‍ and Elizabeth Phillips‍ are good but I would encourage you to take a look at the consent module that was built a couple years ago in response to the GDPR regulation in Europe. It allows you to add and remove solicit codes based on business rules and you can record the reason for the opt-out (or opt-in). It takes a little to set up, but once you are up and running it is a time saver in my opinion. 

Emma Sullivan

Hi, Dan Snyder‍! Thanks, do you know where I can access the consent module? Or do you have more info to share about it? I'll be sharing it with our data team.

Dan Snyder

Emma Sullivan‍ you can access consent from the Bio 1 tab in database view and there is a consent tile in NXT. However, the configuration of business rules needs to be done in database view. Here is a link to the Consent help topic and there are additional links from there about configuring your business rules.


Additionally, Aimee Annichiarico‍ can you share the consent module presentation you gave at the user group with Emma?

JoAnn Strommen

Aimee Annichiarico‍ I would also love to see your presentation.  I'm in first steps of big consent clean up from them being recorded 4 places and 20 ways.


Thanks

Susan Reis

Years ago I created a category in attributes called Special Mail Codes.  I set up an Email Unsubscribed description field.  I include the date they unsubscribed and cut and paste the email to the comments field and then remove the email phone type from the record.  We do not currently have a way to know what they want to unsubscribe from.  But especially with our young alumni when we just sent out an E-Appeal I send them an email asking if they really want not to receive any communications from the School electronically or if they just don't want to be asked for money.  If they respond that they don't want to be solicited I replace the Email Unsubscribe with Do Not Solicit and put the email phone type back in the record.

Rose Dixon

Emailing is a huge issue for us!  We have used Constant Contact and have not yet been able to figure out a way to use OnlineExpress for our emails due to CAN-SPAM and opt outs, and the sheer number of emails we have (some records have 3 or 4 emails and we aren't sure which is the primary).  Would love to see how others are handling all this.  In Constant Contact we have 9k mailable emails, in RE, we have 90k emails that we don't know if they are mailable or not, unless we mail to them, but I don't think we can w/o their consent, right?  And then there are those who do click the consent button on our website, but when I send those emails to the marketing team to add to Constant Contact, they tell me they can't add them because they had opted out in the past.  So now I have them opting in on our website (and in RE), but I have to pretend I am the donor and "opt back in" to CC.

Amelia Ketzle

Dan Snyder‍ - Thanks for the information on Consent.  I didn't realize it did so much!  I thought it was just to record the person's response to a GDPR-style question about contacting them.  Can I ask how you differentiate between a person's GDPR response and a person's more specific contact preferences?  Meaning, if a person responds to the GDPR consent (whatever that looks like) and says they're fine with email, but then in response to a specific email blast, they opt out of future Alumni Association newsletters (for example), those would be recorded in two different places in RE, right?  (Consent and Solicit codes, respectively.)  And more confusingly, what if the person doesn't respond to the Consent question at all, but does opt out of a particular email blast?  I'm not sure I'm articulating this well, but it feels like two layers of the same coding that could easily get confusing, as much for the constituent (who may not realize the distinction either) as for the people maintaining the database.


Thanks for any additional insight you can offer, and I hope I didn't make this too confusing!

Dan Snyder

Amelia Ketzle‍, you are right it can get confusing, but let me see if I can explain it.


In your first example, someone has responded to a GDPR or really any consent to say that it okay to email them. This would be an opt-in consent and may not add anything to your solicit codes if you are using negative solicit codes (ex. Do Not Solicit, Do Not Phone, etc.). Then if that same person opts out of a specific newsletter, you could have a specific consent option for emailed newsletters. You would fill in the appropriate fields on the consent record to opt the person out of emailed newsletters and if your business rules are set up for it, a Do Not Email Newsletters solicit code would be added to the record automatically.


If a person does not respond to a GDPR specific request for consent, my non-attorney understanding is that you need to treat that as an opt-out. However, if the person just opted out of a specific type of email blast you would follow the same steps I mentioned above to opt someone out of those specific type of messages.


In the reverse, if someone has opted out of e-newsletters for example, but later on asks to be added to the list again, you can use consent to track that opt-in and your business rules would remove the solicit code from the record.


If you have more questions, I am happy to chat offline.

Aimee Annichiarico

I am a colleague of Dan Snyder's at Bennington College and we have been using the Consent module in database almost since it came out to manage communication preferences. We have different message types, such as event invitations, newsletters, and solicitations, as well as different platforms for sending those messages. It's important to conduct a needs assessment on your database and do some cleanup on your solicit code table in order to implement this. Attached is a presentation on this that I gave at the VT/NH Raiser's Edge User's Group conference in 2019. Please reach out to me with any questions. Hope this is helpful.


Thanks,

Aimee V. Annichiarico

Advancement Services Associate

Bennington College

JoAnn Strommen

Thanks Aimee Annichiarico‍. Wish I could have heard your presentation.  I know it's issue we're dealing with contact/consent data entered in 5 different places over the history of  the org and only some is channel specific. CEO who left in May wanted to do an info/communication piece about opting in/out to our constituents. Project has moved down in priority since he left.  Still need to get it done this summer.


I'm half way through your slides - great questions to consider and base decisions on. 


Kudos and thanks again.

Milly Jones

This is a useful thread as our organization is looking at how to improve our opt in / opt out process. 

One thing we have run into is where donors might have several different email addresses. So they may opt out in response to receiving an email blast to one email, while still opting in to receiving it via a different email. So far we haven't arrived at a good solution for how to handle this scenario. Does anyone have any good suggestions / experience of this? 

thanks! 

Heather Pauli

Our database is configured to list different email types on the BIO1 tab, so we can then select if communications get sent to "Email", "Email 2" and/or "Convio Email".

Gayle Cowan

Hi. I am also looking for a solution to the problem Milly Jones‍ described. Heather Pauli‍, was your answer specifically meant for her question? Do you have a system with the email types that determines who has opted out with which email addresses? We use the DNC feature when someone opts out with a specific email address, but if a constituent has opted out with one email address but opted in with another, as Milly referenced, I have not found a way to get the usable email address into a query for OLX email marketing. In other words, my query that looks for DNC addresses (in order to merge them OUT of a list of usable emails) will exempt the constituent's entire record instead of just the one DNC email address. Anyone have any suggestions, please?

Brad May

We have a link to an "Email Preferences" page at the bottom of every email we send out through NetCommunity or NXT. The email recipient can click that link, login, and then opt-in or out of various things as listed there, as part of managing their preferences.

Brad

Heather Pauli

I discussed this with my query queen co-worker Wendy, she replied in her usual rock star manner, including proper terminology and a screenshot:


"Depending on how you set up records, you would have to query on the segment you are looking to email – this query would have to take into account any solicit codes used for no emailing and Consent (if you do that) as well as the Requests No Email check box on Bio 1.  Then use that query in an Export.  When you Export, you can choose to export those emails that are not marked DNC.  So a donor that says “yes – it is ok to send me emails – but not to this particular email” would be found during the Export process.

This is the option in Export where they can choose a Phone Type and Exclude phones marked as 'do not contact'.”






Hope this helps!

Judi Umbreit

  Brad May  Hello, would you mind elaborating on the link you add to each email? Where does the Opt-out form reside? Where does the constituent "login" to make their choices? We are just starting to set up  consent solicit codes and I am looking for processes that work for other agencies. 

Thanks!