This article details how to customize the subscription preference options in Feathr's Email Marketing campaigns, and how to manage your audience's subscriptions. Keep in mind that it is your responsibility to adhere to all applicable email communication regulations. Please refer to our Privacy section for best practices, and, if necessary, consult your own legal counsel to ensure compliance for your organization.
Table of Contents
Understanding and Configuring Your Account Subscription Settings
This section covers how your organization's information appears in your emails, how to edit your subscription settings, and how your Projects appear in your audience's subscription preferences.
'Update Your Preferences' Link in Email Footer
Every Email Marketing campaign automatically includes your organizations' sender info and a link to update recipient preferences. It will populate at the bottom of your message, and will look something like this:
When a recipient clicks the link to update their preferences, they will land on a page with options to select their communication preferences. This includes the option to unsubscribe from all emails or unsubscribe from specific Projects.
Note: To comply with laws such as CAN-SPAM, Feathr requires a footer in every email communication. This enforces transparency and accountability for all digital marketing efforts by nonprofits, protecting your organization and your audience.
How to Edit the Physical Address in the Email Footer
The physical address in the email footer populates from your sender details. You can edit your sender details in two places, on the account level or the campaign level.
Editing the physical address on the Account level: In your Feathr account, navigate to Account Settings >> Account >> Email Addresses. This is where you can setup and manage emails for using as the from address on email campaigns. Add or edit the physical address associated with your sender email addresses here.
Editing the physical address on the Campaign level: In your email campaign, you can add or edit the physical address associated with your sender email address in Step 1 of the campaign. Save your changes and the footer will automatically update.
Edit Account Subscription Label
Your organization name is displayed on your audience's subscription preferences page. By default, the name shown will match the name of your Feathr account. To change the subscription name to something different, start by logging into Feathr and navigating to Account Settings >> Account >> Subscriptions.
Here you will see a preview of exactly what your email recipients see when clicking the link in one of your emails to manage their subscription level. It will include an "Unsubscribe me from all" checkbox, as well as individual subscriptions levels for each Project in your account. (More about the Project-level subscriptions below.)
If you'd like to change the name of your overall email subscription, enter the new name in the field labeled Custom subscription name. Save your changes, and the preview will update. Leaving that field blank will keep the default name.
Edit Custom Project Subscription Label
Every Project you create in Feathr is also its own email subscription level. This allows your email recipients to choose which types of emails they receive from your organization.
The Project subscription label defaults to the name of the Project. Because Project names are sometimes more appropriate for internal view only, you also have the option to update the label your recipients see.
To update a Project-level subscription label, navigate to the intended Project, and choose Project Settings, which will bring you to the Project Information. Find the field named Custom email subscription label and update it to the display name you wish to use, and save your changes.
Choosing How to Categorize Your Projects for Subscriptions
Since every Project doubles as its own subscription level, it's worth thinking through how you want to organize your emails into Projects. Some organizations prefer a small number of general categories (for example, "Events" or "Newsletter"), while others get more specific with niche categories that let recipients fine-tune exactly what they want to hear about. Neither approach is right or wrong — choose whatever structure makes sense for your organization and will feel intuitive to your audience when they land on their preferences page.
Note: A recipient's subscription preferences page only lists the Projects they've actually received an email from. Any Project they've never been emailed from won't appear at all.
When a recipient unsubscribes from a specific Project, that preference is tied to the Project itself, not to the individual email. Once someone receives an email sent from a given Project, that Project will always show up in their subscription preferences, even if you later move that specific email campaign into a different Project.
Managing Recipient Subscriptions
This section covers how to manage subscriptions for individuals and entire groups, and how to look into a specific person's or campaign's subscription details when you need to.
Default Subscription Status
Everyone who enters your Community is automatically subscribed by default, so there's no need to manually subscribe someone just so they can receive your emails. The exception is anyone created from an opt-out list import, who starts out unsubscribed.
Bulk Subscription Management
If you need to update the subscription status for a large number of people at once, you can do this by importing an opt-out list. Refer to this article for instructions.
Be sure to label your opt-out import descriptively when you upload it. A clear name makes it much easier to identify later if you ever need to look back and confirm which import a given unsubscribe came from. Anyone included in an opt-out list import is automatically excluded from all future email campaigns.
Re-Subscribing an Unsubscribed Person
If an audience member unsubscribed in the past but now requests to resubscribe, find their record by searching their email address in your Community. Click into the Subscriptions tab in their record, where you can choose which Projects to resubscribe them to.
An audience member can also resubscribe themself by navigating to any of the previously received emails from your organization, and using the Update Preferences link in the email.
Tracking Subscription-Related Activity
Feathr tracks subscription-related activity — like unsubscribes, bounces, and suppressions — as it happens. You can look into it from three different angles depending on whether you're checking one person, building a segment across your whole Community, or reviewing one specific email campaign.
Looking up one person: Find the person's record by email address in your Community. Click into their record, then into the Activity Feed tab to see their activity history. Use the dropdown filter at the top of the activity feed to narrow down to the activity types related to subscription status:
- Updated email preference
- Unsubscribed from email
- Hard bounce
- Email was suppressed
- Reported email as spam
A person's activity feed only shows the activity that's actually happened for that person, not every possible option in the dropdown — so look for whichever of these appear. If someone became unsubscribed through anything other than an opt-out list import, at least one of these activities should show up, along with the date and time it happened. To check whether they were unsubscribed through an opt-out list import instead, filter their activity feed for Created by import and Updated by import.
Segmenting groups across your Community: The same activity types listed above are also available as filters in your Community. Create a new filter set using "Activity Type is ____" with the necessary activity type. Save the filter as a Group for future reference, if needed. This is the best option when you're looking beyond a single person, whether to spot an account-wide trend or clean up your email list.
For a general list of all the people in your Community who are unsubscribed from all emails, by any means, use the filter "Unsubscribed from email is True."
For a list of people who are unsubscribed from a specific Project, use the filter "Unsubscribed from projects contains ____" with the necessary Project.
Reviewing a specific campaign: Open that campaign's report and use the Campaign Engagement table. Select any of the following from the interaction dropdown:
- Hard bounce
- Not Sent via Opt Out
- Reported as Spam
- Unsubscribed from All
From there, you can also use the "create group" button to save that list as a Group.