Solicit codes by email rather than constituent

Michelle Lancto 2

I am updating unsubscribes from our Constant Contact account in RE. RE does not have an option to change the solicit code at the email level, only at the constituent level. If someone has 3 email addresses, the unsubscribe may not apply to all of the addresses.

How are other organizations tracking unsubscribes when more than one email address exists. Are you just using the DNC flag for the unsubscribed email address?

Faith Murray

@Michelle Lancto, I've thought about that same question, because very soon we'll have to update some of our unsubscribes from Mailchimp. I'm inclined to use the “Inactive” phone setting. Originally I had considered the DNC button or even reassigning it to a new “Unsubscribed” email type altogether. However, the new rollout of Portal changes all that. Donors who log into Portal will be able to view all email/phone types, except (I believe!) Inactive ones. I haven't tested this, but I think so because Inactive phones are generally hidden in NXT webview.

Alan French

@Michelle Lancto we use Mailchimp and we apply the unsubscribe at the constituent level (unless people add a comment to their unsubscribe request to say otherwise, which happens occasionally). Personally I'd be pretty annoyed if I unsubscribed from emails from an organisation on my personal email address, only to start receiving them at my work email address instead - in my opinion it's better to not email a few people who might still want to receive emails than it is to annoy a whole bunch of people who do not want to keep receiving emails. We have other channels by which they can update their contact details if that's what they want to do. If an email bounces, then we would mark that particular email address as inactive and start using a different one.

Added to that, there is the issue of having 2 email addresses that look different to the human eye (or a query!) but actually refer to the same mailbox: for example @gmail.com and @googlemail.com are interchangeable, and also our internal staff email addresses have numerous different aliases that all redirect to the same inbox, so Joe.Bloggs@soton.ac.uk and jb9s22@southampton.ac.uk might in fact be the same account. In order to be sure that we're honouring someone's unsubscribe request, I feel like we can't really apply it just at the email level.

Elizabeth Johnson

@Michelle Lancto We have several people that opt out from one email address and are totally fine using another as @Faith Murray mentioned we have several things to consider with this new portal option. We assume when someone opts out that they are opting out from bulk emails and not individual emails from us unless they tell us otherwise so we seldom use the request no emails (that we mostly reserve for Canadian or European emails where they have not opted in) We have an email type of Email_No Bulk and we apply that to the specific email. We do not use the DNC unless they have specifically said do not contact me at this email. If someone opts out of a solicitation or news I do assume they don't want that type of email anymore and give them the according solicit code. We only have around 6,000 constituents with email addresses and most of these people are actually engaged. If we were larger, or we reached out to people that didn't have a connection to the school I'm not sure how sustainable this would be.

Michelle Lancto 2

@Elizabeth Johnson, @Faith Murray, @Alan French Thank you for your responses. I understand the concern about suddenly getting an email at a different email address after unsubscribing an address. It would annoy me too. We do have constituents who have 3 or 4 email addresses in our system. Just because they unsubscribe one, does not mean that they haven't signed up for our our emails using one of the other addresses. Marking an email inactive or DNC prevents any email communication via that avenue. I do like the option of a solicit code that excludes bulk emails. Cleaning up our Solicit Codes is already on my to-do list. I will give it some more thought. Thanks.

Rachel Cavalier

@Michelle Lancto

For unsubscribes, we use the consent module (we are in the UK) to mark their opting out of marketing emails and that translates to a solicit code of "Email - All Types - Opt-out."

Christine Cooke 2

@Michelle Lancto I just updated a bunch of these in our system… and I changed the Email Type to Unsubscribed and put the date in the comment field for that email. That way we still have it and know why it no longer will show up in email lists. If they have more than one email, those are still on their record but do not have a Type of Primary Email so would still be excluded unless we chose to send something and see if they said please don't send to this email.