Email Subscription Management: Cookie-cutter or Custom?

Remember when email subscription management was easy? Back in the “good old days” someone was either in or out, subscribed or unsubscribed, opted-in or opted-out. It was black and white. Plus, we were able to more easily manage our database’s preferences in our one marketing tool.

When did so many shades of grey get added to the considerations for managing subscriptions? What changed? A lot!

More Sophisticated Content
With the ability to personalize content tailored across channels to multiple audience segments, it’s no longer a simple question of opt-in/opt-out. Instead, we ask our customers to choose from a variety of topics of interest and then we need to manage these preferences as they change.

More Sophisticated Tools and Data
Seeking a complete view of our customers and prospects means managing and delivering content using multiple systems that track their responses. When someone opts-out of receiving tweets about our widget and ‘Likes’ the Facebook page for our gadget, we need to update these preferences across all of our marketing systems.

More Sophisticated Privacy Laws
New and evolving data privacy laws in Canada, the European Union and other countries, with sometimes vague regulations, add many shades of definition to what used to be a simple matter of opt-in or opt-out. Now we have to ask things like: How do we know you are who you say you are? Which of our contacts implicitly opted-in or explicitly opted-in? If a contact is implicitly opted in, when does it expire? On top of these complexities, we’ve got to consider the growing list of countries that require explicit opt-in for website tracking. That’s for a future post.

For years, Oracle Eloqua has provided three out-of-the-box solutions for email subscription management:

1. Global Opt-out
2. Campaign Level Opt-out
3. Subscription Management

Early on, many of us used the first two options, but as our marketing became more sophisticated, we moved to Subscription Management. Unfortunately, in today’s world of sophisticated content, data and privacy laws, this tried and true solution may no longer be enough. Enter custom subscription management.

Custom subscription management allows you to create intelligent, dynamic preference centers that tailor your messages and offerings based on who is viewing them and what you know – or don’t know – about them. It also supports compliance with data privacy laws while at the same time giving you more control over how you respond to a given subscription update.

So, when do you want to consider custom subscription management? Here’s why some of our clients have chosen to implement it:

• To comply with data privacy laws and manage the complexities of opt-in management
• To display different subscription options based on industry, role, geography, or other profile characteristics
• To progressively profile (or otherwise dynamically request information)
• Their subscription options are not tied to Eloqua Email Groups
• Their subscription options correlate with multiple campaigns, topics, or Email Groups
• They have multiple subscription/preference centers
• They require sophisticated follow-ups based on a user’s selections

Have you implemented custom subscription management in your organization? Do you have a preference center you’re proud of? Post a link and share what you’ve done with your fellow modern marketers.