Transferring Unsubscribes from outside mail service to OLX

Rob Crenshaw 2

I was wondering if anyone had experience with best practices around moving from a third-party email platform like Constant Contact to Online Express. Specifically, we are trying to figure out how to re-map our unsubscribes in Constant Contact so we can comply with CAN SPAM Act policies when we transfer to using OLX. I understand that OLX has its own unsubscribe file somewhere that seems to sort of just exist nebulously, but I can't figure out how we can transfer our previous unsubs from Constant Contact to OLX.


Complicating this is the fact that our list of unsubscribed email users in CC is really inconsistent about whether or not there's a Raiser's Edge ID associated with them. So even when we export the unsub list, I'm not quite sure how I would map those to specific constituents in RE. We have access to RE Import, but don't have anything that would make it easy, like Import-O-Matic. Does anyone know how this might work or have any suggestions? Thanks!

Mergen Peries

I think you would use solicit codes to tag unsubscribes.  That's how we use them.  After each mail shot in the the 3rd party system, we export all the stats and import back into RE, including the unsubcribes.  You might be able to use the new consent tracking features too.


For incomplete data, you would need to export any RE data that is held in CC.  I would suggest exporting email addresses (plus ID).  Then, where you have no ID in your CC spreadsheet, you can do a VLOOKUP (google it) to find a match in your RE spreadsheet, and populate the RE ID.

Rob Crenshaw 2

Thanks, Mergen. I was also thinking VLOOKUP in Excel would be the only real method we could use for ID-less emails. Regarding the solicit codes, we definitely will use those for folks who indicate they want no email at all from us, but one of our concerns is that we have a lot of really old unsubscribes from years ago and want to apply the "No email" rule at the email level instead of at the constituent level, in case folks have switched to emails they are okay using. I haven't really looked into the consent tracking features yet, but I'll check them out.

Jen Claudy

I know it's been 3 months, but if you haven't figured out a system, you might consider using a new Phone Type, which would be specific to the email address and not affect other emails on that constituent record.  If you export Email Address, Phone Type, and Phone Import ID, you can then match them up in Excel, change the Phone Type, and Import the changes back to RE.