Understanding unsubscribed contacts in magnews

The value of an unsubscribed contact

Unsubscribed contacts in magnews are excluded from receiving communications and are removed from automated flows.
Even though they are excluded from outbound marketing activities, unsubscribed contacts still hold value:

• An unsubscribed contact is not an inactive contact; you can always engage with them through pop-ups and banners on the website and possibly regain their email consent.
• Use unsubscribed contacts as control groups to compare the impact between engaged contacts from an initiative and those not reached.
• Build dynamic audiences including unsubscribed contacts to analyze, for example, purchasing behaviors by age group, interests, or purchased products.

Add an unsubscribe link to emails

• It is good practice to provide contacts with an easy way to unsubscribe from marketing emails.
• Add an unsubscribe link in an email simply by using the magnews syntax [link:unsubscribe].
  
  
  The magnews Inspire template already contains the text for unsubscribing as follows:
• Clicking the link initially directs contacts to a confirmation page, which you can customize with your brand message and colors.
• If you need more control, you can also direct the contact to a page on your site or another external page to magnews. Check the settings of the service flows on the contact database for this.

Manually unsubscribe a contact in magnews

• Access the contact list of a database and select “Subscribed” from the dropdown in the status box.
• Select the contact you wish to unsubscribe and from the top right selector, click on “Unsubscribe contacts”.
• Apply a filter and select all the results from the list to unsubscribe more than one contact at a time.

On the contact card, view the status, the reason for unsubscription, and when it occurred.

Unsubscribe contacts via a list

• For a mass unsubscription of contacts, prepare them in a file that includes their email addresses.
• Import the file by selecting the database from which you want to unsubscribe contacts and click on Import.
• Select the operation type “Unsubscribe”

This can be useful when migrating from other email marketing platforms to magnews to retain your contacts' marketing consent.

Apart from the status, the remaining data assigned to the contacts remains unchanged; it is not necessary to include additional information in the import file.

Allow unsubscription from SMS

Provide the ability for a contact to unsubscribe from SMS messages. The SMS channel offers fewer opportunities than email to enable unsubscription, and mechanisms available in other countries (such as STOP in France) are not available for Italian senders.

• Include an unsubscribe link in the SMS text. If you use magnews shortened links, a few characters may suffice, such as “To unsubscribe, visit https://sms.magnews.com/ABCDEFGH”. You may have to sacrifice part of the content or use a multipart message.
• Alternatively, provide a phone number for further details.

Resubscribe an unsubscribed contact

Magnews allows you to resubscribe contacts in unsubscribed status:

• Manually change the status of a contact from the interface;
• Import a file of contacts and choose the operation type “Update existing contacts”
  
• In Preferences:
  1. Select the option to change the status to “Update and resubscribe contacts”;
  2. Exclude contacts for certain reasons; for example, contacts with emails on the blacklist will not be updated.

Resubscribing unsubscribed contacts can be useful when you want to bring new consents from an offline event back into Magnews.

Identify contacts by unsubscription reason

Use the unsubscription reason in contact filters to identify those who unsubscribed via a link in emails or for other reasons. Contacts may be unsubscribed for:

• Unsubscribe link: the contact used the link in the emails. It is the most common case for voluntary unsubscriptions.
• Link-unsubscribe: this is the shortcut provided by email clients like Gmail to unsubscribe from the newsletter. Remember that this action does not go through any unsubscription page you may have set up in magnews.
• Recipient blacklist: if the contact's email is on the blacklist, for example, because the mailbox is nonexistent, then in the basic configuration, magnews unsubscribes them. Customize blacklist management from the Blacklist Management menu.
• Account unsubscription: the contact has been manually unsubscribed on magnews;
• Subscriber control: refers to contacts you have unsubscribed through magnews control. It applies to contacts with outdated or nonexistent domains, generic emails like info@, or temporary email domains.