Marketing preferences let you improve the targeting and effectiveness of your communications. You can create unlimited marketing preferences and categories, and then use them to organise your contacts based on their likes and interests. By correctly managing your contacts in this way, you're on track to boost engagement rates and improve ROI.

If you need to update or edit a contact's marketing preferences, you can do this quickly in the Single customer view.

Edit a contact's marketing preferences

Go to Audience > Contacts.
Find and select the contact you want to edit the marketing preferences for. You can use the Search field to locate the contact.
On the Single customer view, select the Marketing preferences tab.
Select or clear the checkboxes for the marketing preferences you want to add or remove for the contact.
Select SAVE.

Upload contacts in bulk with preferences

You can upload contacts in bulk with their preferences by including preference columns in the import file.

Learn more in Upload multiple contacts.

To create a source file:

Start all preference column headers with Preference:.
Make sure to include the colon at the end. The word Preference should be translated to match the account language you have set in your Account Settings.
Add your category name, if applicable, and your preference name after the Preference: column header. For example:
- Preferences that are in a category must be formatted like this:
  Preference:Camping>Tents
- Preferences that are alone and not in a category must be formatted like this:
  Preference:Tents
Add the opted-in or opted-out status for each contact in the column for the relevant preference. You must use one of:
- True or False
- Yes or No
- 1 or 0
  The status can also be blank. Check out the tables below to see how blank statuses are handled.

Manage marketing preference statuses

If you use advanced settings for merging uploaded data, a blank status for a preference in an uploaded file is treated differently depending on which setting you choose.

You can only have Opted-in and Not opted-in as a status in-app for a marketing preference.

You can see the possible outcomes for a contact based on their marketing preference status in your import file, and their corresponding status in your account, in the tables below.

Update all data fields (default)

When you select this setting, a blank value for a preference in the import file overwrites the current status in-app, effectively acting as an opt-out for that preference.

As this is the default setting for imported files, this table represents the results you see when you do not change the data merge settings during the data mapping step.

Preference	Existing status in-app	Status in import file	Result
Preference:Camping>Tents	Not opted-in	Yes	Opted-in
Preference:Camping>Clothing	Opted-in	No	Not opted-in
Preference:Camping>Rucksacks	Opted-in		Not opted-in
Preference:Camping>Shoes	Not opted-in	Yes	Opted-in

Don't update data fields with blank values

When you select this setting, a blank value for a preference in the import file is ignored, and the current status in-app does not change. Otherwise, statuses are updated to reflect the status included in the import file.

Preference	Existing status in-app	Status in import file	Result
Preference:Camping>Rucksacks	Opted-in		Opted-in
Preference:Camping>Shoes	Not opted-in		Not opted-in

Don't update data fields that already have a value

When you select this setting, no values from the import file, blank or otherwise, affect existing preference statuses in-app.

Preference	Existing status in-app	Status in import file	Result
Preference:Camping>Tents	Opted-in	No	Opted-in
Preference:Camping>Clothing	Not opted-in	Yes	Not opted-in
Preference:Camping>Rucksacks	Opted-in		Opted-in
Preference:Camping>Shoes	Not opted-in		Not opted-in

Export contact preferences

Contact preferences are included when you export contacts individually or in bulk. This helps with Subject Access Request (SAR) compliance.

Individual export
Each of your contact's preferences are exported when you do an individual export. If you're using preferences in combination with ConsentInsight, then the contact's preferences are also included in the ConsentInsight collection JSON file.

Bulk export
You're asked if you want to include marketing preferences or not when you do a bulk export of multiple contacts.

Marketing preferences overview

How to use marketing preferences

Record consent for your contacts

Synchronise marketing preferences for Microsoft Dynamics

Marketing preferences in Dotdigital for Salesforce