Contacting people who have opted-out of email accidentally

Marnee Beck · March 2017

We think that there might be some people who have accidentally opted-out of receiving emails from us. We would like to contact them to see if they really meant to opt-out of emails. Do you have any best practices on how to reach out to donors who have opted out of email, and then also, direct mail. Please advise as soon as possible. Thanks!

Caitlin Nicholls · March 2017

Marnee Beck:

We think that there might be some people who have accidentally opted-out of receiving emails from us. We would like to contact them to see if they really meant to opt-out of emails. Do you have any best practices on how to reach out to donors who have opted out of email, and then also, direct mail. Please advise as soon as possible. Thanks!

Hi Marnee,

I've got a few suggestions for you.

1) Consider a petition or pledge on your website, facebook page, or through a third-party such as Care2 - often you'll re-engage constituents this way and they will opt back in for communications from you. Sometimes there will be a bit of duplicate management to do but it's worth it in the end.

2) Add a business rule (if you're using Raiser's Edge) or train your donor services/reception that if they are on the phone or in email conversation with a constituent who is opted out of either mail or email, to ask them if they'd like to update their communication preferences.

3) Be sure that you have email interests properly set up and utilized in your Luminate system, so that a constituent can opt-out of specific types of communications instead of just opting out of everything. You can add messaging in your footer that says "You are receiving this email because you're opted-in to communcation about [Email Interest]. To update your interests, click here" or something along those lines.

Hope this is helpful!

Cheers,

Caitlin

Philip Nawrocki · March 2017

Hi Marnee,

When we have board members in our system that have opted-out, we have the liason that works with them send them an e-mail, from the liason's e-mail account, saying something along the lines of:

We noticed you are unsubscribed from our e-mails about <name of interest>. Did you know you can control what you receive from us? Use the following link <link to manage preferences> to choose what you are receiving from us. If you do not have time to do that, would you mind if we re-subscribed you to <interest name they should definitely receive>.

A majority of the time the person in question writes back with us allowing them to add them back to their specific interest.

Thanks,

Phil

Chris Cain 2 · March 2017

Philip Nawrocki:

Hi Marnee,

When we have board members in our system that have opted-out, we have the liason that works with them send them an e-mail, from the liason's e-mail account, saying something along the lines of:

We noticed you are unsubscribed from our e-mails about <name of interest>. Did you know you can control what you receive from us? Use the following link <link to manage preferences> to choose what you are receiving from us. If you do not have time to do that, would you mind if we re-subscribed you to <interest name they should definitely receive>.

A majority of the time the person in question writes back with us allowing them to add them back to their specific interest.

Thanks,

Phil

the suggestions in these replies are good ones! As, Luminate will not deliver a message to opted-out constituent, a different avenue would need to be explored to reach out to them.

An additional suggested practice might be to include a conditional piece of content within triggered autoresponder emails to those constituents who have opted out but continue to take some sort of action.

(something to the effect of: Hey [[First Name]] you're receiving this message because you interacted with us online, but we can't send you our important regular communications! Click here <link to login & manage preferences>...)

Philip Nawrocki · March 2017

Cool idea Chris!

I might have to work that in.

Anne Berlin · April 2017

Philip Nawrocki:

Cool idea Chris!

I might have to work that in.

Agree- going to add that to our event autoresponders, though we don't have advocacy actions enabled so I can't see this reaching too many people. Echoing the recommendations here, I can say from experience in expanding our custom email interest opt-in categories and implementing a welcome series where we ask new constituents to select their email interests, we've seen unsubscribes decrease. We are getting better at separating emails by campaign and using the built-in functionality in LO to add a specific email interest category at the campaign level, so folks can easily opt-out of specific types of emails rather than globally.

Contacting people who have opted-out of email accidentally

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