Using marketing preferences lets you improve the targeting and effectiveness of your communications to boost engagement rates and improve ROI.
Contacts can choose their marketing preferences through a web form or you can include preferences while manually uploading contacts into your account.
How preferences are organised
You can create unlimited marketing preferences, and unlimited categories to put your preferences in. But, not all preferences need to belong to a category — they can stand alone.
Preferences can be either public or private:
Public
Visible in your signup forms, preference centres, and pages and forms for contacts to opt in and out of. A preference can have a public name that's different to its private name. Your contacts only see the public name.
Private
Hidden from contacts and not visible to them. Intended for your internal use only.
Categories can have a public or private name. A category only shows to contacts if it contains at least one public preference.
Example
A sports and outdoor equipment store uses two categories, each containing three preferences:
Category 1: Camping
Preference 1: Tents
Preference 2: Clothing
Preference 3: Rucksacks
Category 2: Sports
Preference 1: Football
Preference 2: Running
Preference 3: Tennis
Create a category
Expand the User menu and go to Settings > Contacts > Marketing preferences.
Select NEW PREFERENCE OR CATEGORY.
On the New preference or category side panel, for Select type, select CATEGORY.
Enter a private name and public name for your category.
You only need to enter a public name if you want it to be different from the private name. Categories, as well as preferences that appear in the same category, or that don't belong to a category, must have a unique private name.Select CREATE.
Create a marketing preference
Expand the User menu and go to Settings > Contacts > Marketing preferences.
Select NEW PREFERENCE OR CATEGORY.
On the New preference or category side panel, for Select type, select PREFERENCE.
Enter a private name and public name for your preference.
Expand the Access drop-down menu, and choose either This preference is public or This preference is private.
If you want to place the preference into a category, expand the Category drop-down menu, and choose a category for your preference.
Select CREATE.
Manage marketing preferences
To view, manage, edit, and delete your marketing preferences, expand the User menu and go to Settings > Contacts > Marketing preferences.
From here you can drag your preferences into and out of categories, and reorder them.
You can also delete a preference or category. To do this:
Select the checkbox for the category or preference you want to delete.
You can select multiple options if you want to. Selecting a category automatically selects any preferences inside it.Select DELETE.
You see a warning that the action cannot be undone. Select DELETE to confirm.
To edit the properties of a category or preference:
Select the category or preference to open the Edit preference/category side panel.
Make your desired changes.
Select SAVE.
Any changes you make here automatically take effect in the default preference centre, the signup form generator and the Preferences block in the Pages and forms builder.
Any signup forms you have generated prior to making changes to your marketing preferences do not update, and need to be regenerated or edited to reflect any updates.
View contacts in a preference
Contacts have the option to opt themselves in to your public marketing preferences through a preference centre or form, or you can opt your contacts in or out of marketing preferences yourself - either individually, or in bulk through a file import.
Learn more in Edit, import and export marketing preferences.
To see the contacts who are opted-in to a particular preference:
Expand the User menu and go to Settings > Contacts > Marketing preferences.
In the Contacts column, select the number to see a list of opted-in contacts.
From here, you can select EXPORT to download the list of contacts as a .csv file, or select MORE ACTIONS to:
Copy the contacts to an existing list.
Send the contacts a previously sent campaign.
Delete the contacts from your account.
Suppress the contacts from your account.
Marketing preferences in reporting
You can find marketing preferences in reporting in the following areas:
If you send a campaign to one or more marketing preferences, then in the Campaign details section of the campaign report overview you can see which preferences you sent a campaign to.
At the bottom of the email dashboard, a chart shows a breakdown of your preferences by popularity (maximum of 25 preferences) as they stand at the current time.
Using the filter or date range functions on the email dashboard does not affect this chart.