Email unsubscribe - how to add more finesse to the functionality ?

Hi @Damien! How are you? Did you check this article: https://academy.creatio.com/docs/8.x/creatio-apps/products/marketing-tools/email-marketing/classic-ui/additional-setup/manage-subscriptions-for-various-email-types? 
We have a landing page where we redirect the user when they click on unsubscribe, and we show them all the types of emails, indicating with toggle buttons which ones they are subscribed to and which ones they are unsubscribed from. We can even define types of emails that the user cannot unsubscribe from.

Uriel Nusenbaum,

I somehow missed it , thanks ! 

But the other way round, how does the system know who it can send emails to. By default, doesn't the system look at the "do not email" field ? (in the case someone unsubscribes only for some type of communications). 

Cheers, 

Damien

Damien Collot,

Hi Damien,

By default, Creatio determines whether a contact can receive bulk emails based on the “Do not use email” flag on the contact.

In the standard unsubscribe flow when a recipient clicks the unsubscribe link, the request is processed by the email provider (ESP), and then Creatio sets Contact.DoNotUseEmail = true

This effectively excludes the contact from all future bulk email communications.

Regarding your use case (granular subscription by email type):

The approach suggested in the article above is indeed a good workaround. It allows you to implement a custom preference center (landing page) where users can manage subscriptions by category.

Creatio allows configuring a custom landing page or additional processing logic for unsubscribers via the “Website to redirect the unsubscribed” (RedirectUnsubscribersTo) system setting.

This means you can build your own preference center and overwrite the logic related with parameters passed in the unsubscribe URL to implement additional subscription logic on your side.

However, it is important to ensure that it is really needed to overwrite the standard unsubscribe flow, including the “Do not use email” flag, since this is the core mechanism used by Creatio to determine whether a contact can receive emails and it can impact the domain reputation.

Hope this helps clarify!
 

Valeriia Hromova,

Thank you very much for the additional details 🙂🙏 — this is becoming much clearer.

Your explanation from “By default…” through to “…on your side” is fully understood.

However, I still have some questions regarding the final part. Let me clarify with an example:

Let’s assume a contact has subscribed to event-related emails, but not to product marketing emails.

1. Assumption
Based on your explanation, I understand that if a contact has consented to receive at least one type of marketing communication, the “Do not use email” flag should remain unchecked.
Could you please confirm if this is correct?

2. Email targeting logic
How can we ensure that, when sending a marketing email, the system checks not only the “Do not use email” flag, but also whether the contact is subscribed to the specific email type (e.g. events vs. product marketing) before sending?

3. Unsubscribe tracking
Additionally, how is the unsubscribe rate calculated in email statistics in this scenario?

Thank you again for your time and support.

Damien

Hi Damien,

Regarding this: 

1. Assumption
Based on your explanation, I understand that if a contact has consented to receive at least one type of marketing communication, the “Do not use email” flag should remain unchecked.
Could you please confirm if this is correct?

Correct. The "Do not use email" is the master "unsubscribe" from everything. If a user unsubscribes from a particular list, the "Do not use email" should remain false (if it's set to true, it overrides any single subscription for a contact)

Regarding this: 

Email targeting logic
How can we ensure that, when sending a marketing email, the system checks not only the “Do not use email” flag, but also whether the contact is subscribed to the specific email type (e.g. events vs. product marketing) before sending?

The system does automatically prevent sending to a contact with an explicit "unsubscribe" for a particular list. For example, if you have a subscription for "Newsletter" and you add an "Unsubscribe" for the "Newsletter" on a contact, the system will automatically filter out that contact from any bulk e-mails of type Newsletter (which obviously means the user creating the bulk email needs to indicate the email type on the bulk email as well so it matches with subscriptions). This only works for a subscription record with an Unsubscribe value, where the system will automatically filter them out and prevent sending. A contact with no subscription record at all for that type is considered an implicit "subscribed". Note: that is all overriden by the "Do not use email" being true. If that is checked, no emails will go to that contact no matter what their subscriptions are.

I'm not sure how individual subscription unsubscribes count for the stats. Not sure if that counts as an "unsubscribe" since it's really our own pages that are updating the subscription records. Maybe they just track or count that the unsubscribe link was clicked (which could be misleading, since maybe they didn't actually follow through and unsubscribe once they got to the page)? Not sure on that. 

Ryan