Marketing preferences provide you with a flexible and straightforward way to manage data about your contacts’ interests or communication preferences.

Send an email campaign to preferences

Create your email campaign in the normal way. The remaining steps start once you reach the Contacts step of the campaign creation and sending process.
Select the Marketing preferences tab.
Select the checkboxes for the preferences you want to send to. Select a category to choose all the preferences in that category.
Continue with sending your campaign in the usual way.

Send an SMS campaign to preferences

Create your SMS campaign in the normal way. The remaining steps start once you are ready to send the campaign.
From the SMS editor, select SAVE & CONTINUE or go to All SMS campaigns and select the Send icon.
Under the heading Select the contacts to send this campaign to, select the Marketing preferences tab.
Select the checkboxes for the preferences you want to send to. Select a category to choose all the preferences in that category.
Continue with sending your campaign in the usual way.

Use preferences in segments

Go to Audience > Segments and either create a new segment or edit an existing segment.
Drag the Preferences block from the Sources section of the left hand menu to the Include or Exclude dropzone.
To create your rule, select have any preferences.
Expand the drop-down menu at the top of the window to select have any preferences, have specific preferences, or do not have specific preferences.
Select the checkboxes for the preferences you want to use with the rule. Select a category to automatically select all preferences within that category.
If you selected the rule have any preferences the option to select specific preferences is greyed out, as this rule automatically includes all contacts who have opted in to any one or more of your preferences.
Select OK.

Use preferences in a signup form

You can make public preferences visible when you create a signup form.

When the generated code is applied on your site, your signups see the preferences on the form and can opt into—or out of—them.

Only preferences set as public display in the signup form.

Use preferences in your preference centre

Public preferences are automatically shown on the preference centre for contacts to opt-in and -out of. Private preferences are never shown.

Want a more customised preference centre? Check out Set up a preference centre.

Use preferences in Surveys, pages, and forms

To add public preferences to a survey or form, drag the Preferences block onto the canvas from the Form blocks section of the left side menu.

This allows your respondents to select the preferences they are interested in, and clear those they want to opt-out of.

Learn more in Form: Add marketing preferences checkboxes.

Use preferences with ConsentInsight

When you use preferences together with recording consent — ConsentInsight — for a contact, then the contact's preferences are recorded and added to the ConsentInsight record.

Learn more in Record consent for your contacts.

You can collect this data either in a survey or signup form, or you can upload contacts in a file that contains both consent and preferences.

With ConsentInsight preferences you can:

Have consent text that says, for example, I agree to receive communications on the preferences I have selected, and then any chosen preferences are stored in the same ConsentInsight record.
Perform an audit: if a member of your team changes a contact's preferences manually by using the Marketing preferences tab, then you can confirm this by comparing what the contact consented to in their ConsentInsight record.
Segment on preferences as part of Insight data.
Use these preferences for personalisation using Liquid.
Learn more in the Liquid section of our Help Centre.

Use preferences in the program builder

When building a program, there are three nodes you can use preferences with:

The Update contact node
You can update a contact to be opted into or out of a preference or preferences.

The Decision or Multi-decision node
You can select the condition that a contact must be opted into a selected preference in order for them to progress down a given route.

There's also a useful program template that helps you to migrate your preferences if you're already storing them in another way within the platform.

To find and use this template:

Go to Automation > Programs.
Select NEW PROGRAM.
Under Engagement select Marketing preferences migrator.
If you want to, rename the program, then select CONTINUE.

The program template opens in the program builder with pre-configured nodes and instructions on how to complete the program setup.