Best Practice Question - Email Unsubscribes

Ellen Callahan
Ellen Callahan
Fourth Anniversary Name Dropper Participant Facilitator 1
in Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT®: General Discussions

Hi all, we have switched to the NXT platform for our emailing. I just had an opinion question on best practices on how to handle email unsubscribes. When a person unsubscribes their email address in response to an NXT email but has an additional email address on their record, does your organization mark the secondary email as Primary and begin to email that secondary email address? Or does your organization code the individual to no longer receive mass emails after unsubscribing from an NXT email regardless if they have an additional email on their record?

Comments

  • Nicholas Mascari
    Nicholas Mascari
    Third Anniversary Kudos 1 Name Dropper Facilitator 1

    @Ellen Bartlett

    We don't make any changes to the record → they could just be unsubscribing because they don't want your emails on that specific email. We'll make changes if they reply and specifically state they don't want us to contact them anymore.

    Also if you're unaware, you don't have to change their next email to primary. The “Emails marked as Primary” selection will target the next available email if they don't have one marked as primary already.

    “if you select to send to primary email and a constituent in the list does NOT have an email marked primary, the email will send it to the first email found. That email must not be in the blacklist and is not marked 'Inactive' or 'Do Not Email'.”


  • Rachel Cavalier
    Rachel Cavalier Community All-Star
    Seventh Anniversary Kudos 5 PowerUp Challenge - Chat for Blackbaud AI Task 3 bbcon 2025 Attendee Badge

    We take an unsubscribe as an indicator that the person has unsubscribed, regardless of other email addresses we might have for them. Essentially, they have withdrawn their consent for email marketing.

    Usually if a supporter would like to receive emails to a different address, they get in touch to tell us.

  • Austen Brown
    Austen Brown Community All-Star
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 5 PowerUp Challenge: Product Update Briefing Feedback Task 3 bbcon 2025 Attendee Badge

    @Ellen Bartlett - It really depends on your organization. Personally, I'm inclined to move on to the next available email rather than marking the entire record as unsubscribed.

  • Jaclyn Whitelock
    Jaclyn Whitelock
    Fourth Anniversary Kudos 2 PowerUp Challenge: Product Update Briefing Feedback Task 3 First Reply

    @Ellen Bartlett we consider them unsubscribed from email marketing moving forward, and have our consent set up to reflect these (e.g. unsubscribe via one email results in a solicit code of “do not email” being added to the record). This doesn't affect other forms of communication though, such as mail or phone.

    My general inclination for these sorts of circumstances is to put myself in the donor's shoes- if I've taken the effort to unsubscribe, I would personally be annoyed if the org moved on to my next email address and I received another communication the following week. As someone else pointed out in a thread here, if a donor wishes to change their email address on record, they'll generally reach out.

  • Faith Murray
    Faith Murray Community All-Star
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 5 First Reply Name Dropper

    @Ellen Bartlett
    I'm with Nicholas on this one. Having 4 different email addresses myself, each targeted for a different purpose (one for bills, one for blogs and media, one for family interests, etc) I often accidentally subscribe to something on multiple addresses. When this happens, I unsubscribe on one email address, but I still want to receive emails on the second address. I don't think you can assume that they don't want to hear from you at all on any email address. If in doubt, you can reach out to them or create a process to send a “checking in - do you want to receive our emails” message to such donors.

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