The preference centre allows contacts to:

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

After you've set up the preference centre, contacts can access it by selecting a link in one of your email campaigns.

Use 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 lists that you set as public in your account. Anything set as private is not visible.

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

Learn more about Preference centre links.

Set up the preference centre

Set all contact data fields, preferences, and lists that you want to show in the preference centre to public. By default, contact data fields and lists are private.
Insert a link to the preference centre in your email campaigns. There are two ways to do this.
1. Send contacts to the preference centre when they select Unsubscribe.
2. Insert a separate preference centre link in your email campaigns.

Set contact data fields, preferences, and lists as public

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

To show contact data fields, preferences, and lists 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 lists to public, your contacts can see them when they access the preference centre. Make sure that you use names your contacts can understand.

Set contact data fields to public

Expand the User menu and go to Settings > Contacts > Contact data fields.
Select the Properties icon of the contact data field that you want to set to public.
Contact data fields are spread across two tabs: Default data fields stores the contact’s personal details, and Custom data fields stores all fields created by you or your team.
Expand the Access drop-down menu and select Public.
Select SAVE.

Set preferences to public

Expand the User menu and go to Settings > Contacts > Marketing preferences.
Select the preference name that you want to set to public.
Expand the Access drop-down menu and select Public.
Select SAVE.

Set lists to public

Go to Audience > Lists.
Select the Properties icon of the list 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 in an email campaign:

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

Expand the User menu and go to Settings > General > Account settings.
Under the heading Unsubscribe and preference centre settings, expand the When a contact clicks ‘unsubscribe’ drop-down menu and select Show the preference centre chosen below.
To display the default preference centre, expand the When a contact wants to change their marketing preferences drop-down menu and select Show the default preference centre.
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 email campaigns, where the Unsubscribe link removes the contact from all lists and the Preference centre link allows them to edit their preferences.

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

Expand the User menu and go to Settings > General > Account settings.
Under the heading Unsubscribe and preference centre settings, expand the When a contact clicks unsubscribe drop-down menu and select Show the unsubscribe page.
Select SAVE SETTINGS.

This enables the Preference centre link option in the email EasyEditor, in addition to the Unsubscribe link option.

Insert a preference centre link

Learn how in 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.

Preference centre translations

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

Customise the preference centre

To customise the default preference centre, contact your customer success representative, 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. This is a chargeable service.

Alternatively, you can use the Surveys, pages, and forms tool and its Marketing preferences element. This lets you effectively create a preference centre that you can customise by adding your own images for branding and using your own copy.

Preference centres built with Surveys, pages, and forms

When building your own custom preference centre using the Surveys, pages, and forms tool, it’s important to note that:

It’s not possible to include your contact lists in a survey, page or form (even those set to Public) in the same way you can with the default preference centre or a signup form.
Use this type of preference centre if you are happy to only display marketing preferences or contact data fields to your contacts to edit, rather than lists.
You can use an automated program to sort contacts into specific lists based on their responses to a preference centre built with Surveys, pages, and forms.
The form needs to either be embedded on a page of your website, or you can use the URL of the form itself as the custom preference centre.
To ensure the Preference centre link in your email campaigns displays your custom form:
1. Expand the User menu and go to Settings > General > Account settings.
2. Under the heading Unsubscribe and preference centre settings, expand the When a contact wants to change their marketing preferences drop-down menu and select either Show a custom preference centre on a page or Show a custom preference centre on a URL.
It’s not possible to include an unsubscribe option in a custom preference centre that uses Surveys, pages, and forms form blocks, so you need to include a separate unsubscribe link in your campaigns if you use this type of custom preference centre.
If you want to use a custom process for unsubscribing contacts, check out Create an unsubscribe option on your page or contact your Customer Success representative to discuss how we can help you with this.