Set up a preference centre – Dotdigital Help Centre

Learn how to set up a preference centre for your contacts to manage their data, marketing preferences, and subscriptions.

Overview

A preference centre is a form to help you improve communications with your contacts by giving them an easy way to manage how you contact them and what data you hold about them.

The preference centre allows contacts to do the following:

Change their details
Change their marketing preferences
Change the address books that they belong to, meaning they can unsubscribe from specific address books instead of unsubscribing from all address books — opt down instead of opting out.

After you've set up the preference centre, contacts select a link in your campaign to access it.

Using the preference centre

When a contact wants to make changes in the preference centre they must select the link in your campaign, edit their preferences, and then select Save your preferences.

In the preference centre, contacts see any contact data fields, preferences, and address books that you set as public in your account. Anything set as private is not visible to contacts.

If the contact wants to unsubscribe from everything, they select Unsubscribe from all email in the preference centre.

Set up the preference centre

To set up a preference centre:

Set all contact data fields, preferences, and address books that you want to show in the preference centre to public. By default, contact data fields and address books are private.

To learn how, check out Set contact data fields, preferences, and address books as public.
Insert a link to the preference centre in your campaign. There are two ways to do this.
- Send contacts to the preference centre when they select Unsubscribe.
  
  To learn how, check out Send contacts to the preference centre with Unsubscribe.
- Insert a separate preference centre link in your campaign.
  
  To learn how, check out Insert a preference centre link.

Set contact data fields, preferences, and address books as public

Contacts can edit their details, preferences, and the address books they belong to by changing the values in their contact data fields and by selecting and de-selecting preferences and address books.

To show contact data fields, preferences, and address books in the preference centre, you need to set their visibility to public.

Make sure names are user friendly

After you set contact data fields, preferences, or address books to public, your contacts can see them when they access the preference centre. Make sure that you use names your contacts will understand.

Set contact data fields to public

Go to Email > Contacts > Contact data fields and select the Custom data fields tab
Select the Properties icon of the contact data field that you want to set to public
For Access, select This data label is public.
Select SAVE.

Set preferences to public

Go to Email > Contacts > Marketing preferences.
Select the Edit icon of the preference that you want to set to public.
For Access, select This preference is public.
Select UPDATE.

Set address books to public

Go to Email > Contacts
Select the Properties icon of the address book that you want to set to public.
For Visibility under the Settings tab, select Public (show in preference centre).
Select SAVE.

Send contacts to the preference centre with Unsubscribe

To send contacts to the preference centre when they select Unsubscribe:

For new accounts, contacts are sent to the preference centre by default when they select Unsubscribe.

Go to Settings (⋮) > Account.
Select the Account settings tab, under the heading Unsubscribe and preference centre settings for When a contact clicks unsubscribe select Show the preference centre chosen below.
To display the default preference centre, select Show the default preference centre for 'When a contact wants to change their marketing preferences' (if you have a custom preference centre, then select one of the other appropriate choices).
Select SAVE SETTINGS.

Preference centre links

You can include both Unsubscribe and preference centre links in your campaign, where the Unsubscribe link removes the contact from all address books.

Settings

To allow both Unsubscribe and preference centre links in your campaign:

Go to Settings (⋮) > Account > Account settings.
Select the Account settings tab, under the heading Unsubscribe and preference centre settings for When a contact clicks unsubscribe select Show the unsubscribe page.
Select Save settings at the bottom of the page.

Insert a preference centre link

To insert a preference centre link into your campaign:

When editing your campaign content, add the text that you'd like to use to link to the preference centre, for example, Change my details).
Select the text, then select Link from the EasyEditor toolbar.
For Add a link, select Preference centre and then select Insert.

To learn how to insert a link in your campaign, check out the article Add a preference centre link to your campaign.

If you send contacts to the preference centre when they select Unsubscribe, you can't also insert a separate link to the preference centre.

Send contacts a translated preference centre

The preference centre is available in 20 different languages. We'll send each of your contacts a preference centre that has been translated into the language that their computer is set to (if that language is available).

To learn more, check out the article Display the Unsubscribe or Preferences page in your contact's language.

Customise the preference centre

To customise your preference centre, contact your account manager, customer success manager, or fill out this request form.

Set Account Management as the query type; our creative services team will be in touch to build a solution for you.

Alternatively, you can use Pages and forms and its Marketing preferences element. This lets you effectively create a preference centre that you can customise, for example, add your own images for branding and use your own copy.

Note that:

It isn’t possible to allow your contacts to select from a list of your public address books in a page or form, as you can with the default preference centre or a signup form. Use this type of preference centre if you are using marketing preferences or data field values to group your contacts, rather than address books.
It is possible to use an automated program to sort contacts into specific address books based on their responses to the form, as outlined in the article How do I segment contacts based on their answers to a survey?
The form needs to be embedded on a page of your website, or you can use the page or form itself as the custom preference centre. To set how a user accesses their preferences, go to Settings > Account > Account settings > Unsubscribe and preference centre settings. Beside the When a contact wants to change their marketing preferences field, select either Show a custom preference centre on a page or Show a custom preference centre on a URL.
Use these kinds of preference centre options when using separate unsubscribe and update your preferences links in your campaigns.

If you want to use a custom process for unsubscribing contacts, check out the article Create an unsubscribe option on your page or contact your Account Manager.