Marketing Cloud Basics

Technical Enablement Series - Session 6

Standard Subscription Management

Presented by: Vladimir Silak, Director

Partner Development, Marketing Cloud, APAC
Logistics
Quick Reminder
Collaboration and Feedback

Our Goals Collaboration Feedback

Introduce key foundational MC Technical Awareness Thank you and please keep
concepts in the product Webinars (TAW) providing us feedback after
the series are over via
demonstrate how to also don’t forget the
chatter group
navigate product Official: Marketing Cloud
and how to apply some of Partners
these concepts to your
solutions
Upcoming Topics - MC Optimize Series
Intermediate Skills - SQL in the context of Marketing Cloud

Session 1 Session 2

MC SQL - supported MC SQL - system data

operations, working with views, mixing with send log
data extensions
Agenda For Today

Email Subscription Mobile Subscription

Q&A
Management Management

Lists overview SMS Preferences

Enterprise vs Business Unit Push Preferences
Unsubscribe from All
Email Subscriptions
Management
MC Basics Series
First Comes First - We Are Permissions Based Platform

We respect subscribers and their permissions to

interact via marketing communications!
Our customers should not be sending
communications to the subscriber from whom the
permission was not acquired.
This is applicable to any channel and follows best
practices recommendations.
Storing Permissions & Preferences
List (and it's variations) and Data Extension

List stores subscriber attributes and permission status - Active or Unsubscribed (Bounced and
Held too), technically required for any send by Email Studio
Preference Attributes store customer communication preferences
Publication List used to capture status for the send with data extension or data filter target
audience
Suppression List stores subscribers who should be excluded from the send, but it does not
store subscriber attributes; it's a different concept to store contacts who are unsubscribed
separately from active subscribers
Variation of this list is Auto-Suppression List
Data Extension stores any data, including subscriber attributes, permissions
and preferences
Permissions VS Preferences
Let's make it easy to understand what is what
Permissions are "black and white" -
customer allows brand to initiate digital
interactions with them
Something that platform features should be
able to recognize and respect preventing
user mistakes and avoiding compliance
issues
E.g. "I don't want to receive any marketing
email messages although quite happy to
receive SMS"
Preferences are "shades of gray" - enable
customer to express what content they
prefer to receive, on what cadence
These imply certain expectations on the
brand to categorize their communications
and follow the expressed schedule/cadence
Preferences traditionally adhered via
segmentation and in some cases via
platform features
E.g. "I prefer to receive weekly Hot Offers
via SMS and monthly catalogue updates
via email"
What Objects Stores What?

Permissions Preferences

Subscriber List
All Subscribers List

Publication List

Auto-Suppression List
Suppression List

Data Extension
How Do We Apply Subscription Preferences?
2
Enterprise Business Unit Business Unit Subscriber List

Publication List

Suppression List

PLATFORM - MANUAL

4 3
1
All Subscribers List All Subscribers List
Data Extension

SEGMENTATION
Auto-Suppression List Auto-Suppression List

PLATFORM - AUTO PLATFORM - AUTO

Send Scenario
How Audience Gets Finalized

"I'm confused, so what really happens when I

send an email to a target audience?"

Glad you asked, let's look into some scenarios...

Sending Email To a List or Group
Commercial Send

Subscriber List (s) Suppression List

AND / OR
Group (s) Auto-Suppression List
Send Send
Initiated Executed
Unsubscribes -
Business Unit

Unsubscribes -
Enterprise BU

Exclusions
Sending Email To a Data Extension or Filter
Commercial Send
Publication List
Data Extension (s)
AND / OR Suppression List

Data Filter (s)

Send Auto-Suppression List Send
Initiated Executed
Unsubscribes -
Business Unit

Unsubscribes -
Enterprise BU

Exclusions
Finalization of Audience During Email Send
Commercial Send

Remove suppressions,
Select Active Execute
exclusions, unsubscribes
subscribers Send
from hierarchy
Finalization of Audience During Email Send
Transactional Send

Remove suppressions,
Select Active Execute
exclusions, unsubscribes
subscribers Send
from hierarchy

Optional and only applied if

selected in the Sender
Classification
"Ok, that is clear now. But how do subscribers
tell us about their preferences before and after
the send?"

Let's have a look at how we are capturing and exposing

preferences and permissions...
Capturing Data

Web Collect (List) or DEManager (Data Extension)

Allows for subscriber attributes, preferences and for Web Collect only opt in for 1 or more
lists
Other methods include MC landing pages (AMPscript, SSJS), Import activity or API integration
Permissions and preferences are stored and applied against Subscriber Key
When data added to the list subscriber record created right away
When adding data to data extension subscriber record created in corresponding list only
during 1st send
Consider using double opt-in strategy to ensure your clients collecting data for subscribers who
really want to receive their marketing communications with the following code:
%%double_opt_in_url%%
Profile Center
Exposing Data

Enables subscribers to update their attributes and

preferences
Displays not hidden and allows to modify not
read-only only attributes
Updates are only captured in the All Subscriber list
with data extensions are not linked to this
experience at all
Unsubscribe From All flag enables switch of the
optin status at the BU/Enterprise level
Required for commercial email sends and added to
the email/template using following code:
%%profile_center_url%%
Subscription Center
Exposing Data

Enables subscribers to fine tune their subscription

preferences displayed as Available Publications
for each public subscriber, publication or
suppression lists
Optin for subscriber and publication, and optout
selection for suppression lists
Unsubscribe From All flag enables switch of the
optin status at the BU/Enterprise level
Recommended for commercial email sends and
added to the email/template using following code:
%%subscription_center_url%%
One Click Unsubscribe
Exposing Data

Enables subscribers to unsubscribe from the list

directly after clicking on the link in the email
Usually exposed as Unsubscribe link in the email
and is recommended and can be configured to be
mandatory for commercial sends
Provides links to Profile and Preference centers
and includes Unsubscribe From All button that
enables switch of the optin status at the
BU/Enterprise level
Recommended for commercial email sends and
added to the email/template using following code:
%%unsub_center_url%%
"Right, these look … simple? Is there any way
we can customize the look & feel?
Also, what about data extensions if we need to
update those?"
UX Customization & Data Extensions Updates

You can upload new logo and change color scheme for the subscription management pages
(both centers and one-click unsubscribe) using Brand Builder
No other customization is available and you need to consider Custom Preference Management
if your clients need modernized, responsive UX
There is no support for data extensions update (capturing preferences changes in the data
extension(s)) via any of these experiences. Once again this could be a reason for custom
experience.
"What happens if I don't select a list for the
send, especially when my audience is data
extension or data filter?"
Default List for Email Send

If you sending an email to the audience with target being data extension or data filter and no
publication list is nominated system will always default to All Subscribers list
It's not necessarily wrong, but removes the ability to capture preferences and only expose
permission flags in the subscription management pages
SMS Preferences
MC Basics Series
MobileConnect Preferences
How do we know if we can send SMS?

For SMS communications we only really manage permissions via platform features and
preferences can only be managed via segmentation
The contact opt in is captured against short/long code + keyword + Mobile Number
combination even if various Contact Keys used
Optin into the keyword can be used to create filtered lists to target specific group of
contacts via MobileConnect Data > MobileConnect Demographics > MobileConnect
Subscriptions attribute groups in Contact Builder
Once the contact opts out then this will be applied against all keywords for a given short/long
code
If the code is provisioned across multiple BU's the keyword is only available in 1 BU at any point
in time
Capturing Data

There are few ways to add contacts to the MobileConnect contact database:
● Import from data extension in Marketing Cloud
● Optin sending SMS with Keyword as text to a defined short/long code
● Via API, e.g. from landing pages

For the opt out the contact simply sends the message with STOP or any other stop keywords to
the short/long code.
Unsubscribe via API will simulate message from the contact and behave in the same way
Push Preferences
MC Basics Series
MobilePush Preferences
How do we know if we can send Push notification?

For Push communications we purely rely on the SDK implementation to inform Marketing Cloud
of the fact whether or not contact enabled notifications on the device
We can't force optin status from Marketing Cloud platform to overwrite device behavior
Use MobilePush Data > MobilePush Demographics > MobilePush Subscriptions to target
contacts who are opted in for a specific application
Time For a Quick Demo

How to use lists in Email Studio

Sample keyword setup in MobileConnect and filtering contacts
Time for Questions