How is a constituent treated when opted-in AND opted-out of the e-newsletter?

Patrick Hansen:

It all depends on how you've configured the audience for your e-newsletter email campaign (assuming you have one campaign and consistently use that campaign to send your e-newsletter every month).

If you're allowing constituents to manage their email preferences themselves using interest categories and use the opt-out group for your e-newsletter interest category in the "Do Not Mail List" when configuring the audience for that campaign, then it's not possible for your constituents to be "both" opted-in and opted-out. A constituent has either opted themselve into an interest category or opted themselves out, but can't do both.

If, however, you're sending your e-newsletter to your entire housefile by sending it to "Any Registered User" (not a practice I generally recommend, but common for smaller organizations and also for orgs who have smaller lists) and don't have an e-newsletter interest opt-out group included in the "Do Not Mail List", then your constituents are either opted in globablly (and will receive your newsletter, no matter what interests they're opted into or out of) or opted out globally (they've unsubscribed and won't hear from you again, unless they interact with your site in the future and opt back in). In this case, it would be possible to be opted-in to receiving email in general and opted out of an interest category (since the interest category isn't actually being used in your e-newsletter campaign) and thus still get the e-newsletter.

In addition, if you're manually adding your (or others') email addresses to both opt-in and opt-out groups and both groups are used in the campaign set-up (the opt-in in the "Target List" and the opt-out in the "Do Not Mail List"), then you should not be receiving the newsletter.

One more caveat - if you've managed to create duplicate email addresses in your Constituent360 database, it's possible that you've opted one instance of your email address in while the other is opted out. This is an anomoly and not possible "organically", but it is possible for administrators to force duplicates (usually unintentionally) in their database. You might want to make sure you don't have duplicate email addresses for the records you're testing.

Is it possible for an end user to opt out globally for email but opt in to an interest category or center so they only receive certain emails, but not all emails? See attached screenshot.

Also is it possible as back-end administrators for us to set those preferences for an end user, or better yet set the preferences via data sync or file upload?

James Zetlen:

Hi Matt,

It's not possible to send campaign emails to a constituent who has globally opted out. The global opt-out sets an ACCEPT_EMAIL value on the profile to FALSE. That prevents campaign emails (but not autoresponders) from getting through. No interest category can override this. That's why it's important to present an interest categories checklist whenever the constituent gets an opportunity to globally opt out!

As for setting these preferences, it's certainly possible for administrators to change the ACCEPT_EMAIL value manually, either one at a time or via an upload. We sometimesmake use of this feature when a Survey has been misconfigured to opt people out upon signup, or when a mishandled bulk operation or upload opted a large number of constituents out of all email. But in general we recommend that you don't do this! It's good to assume that an opted-out constituent wants to be opted out; if you manually opt him/her back in, you run the risk of spam complaints, which we take very seriously.

This is actually not correct, there are safety mechanisms in place that will not allow an admin to switch the ACCEPT_EMAIL property in any direction other than from TRUE to FALSE. To initiate this change the other way you will need to do so manually. You can also try to contact support and we will present your reasoning for the mass change to our email deliverability team to see if they will approve the conversion.