How to setup an unsubscribe process

VoC Feedback supports customers who wish to de-list themselves from future email campaigns by offering an Unsubscribe link in every email sent using the system.

There are two ways to do this:

• use a SandSIV Unsubscribe link -or-
• use an Unsubscribe link directly to your company's CRM system.

In this article, we will show how to set up a SandSIV Unsubscribe link and set up the unsubscribing poll. However, the steps are similar for setting up the integration with your CRM.

Setting up the URL

1. Navigate to Advanced Settings to set the URL in the setting Invitation Email - URL unsubscribe. We recommend defining this setting on a global level. This way it will be automatically populated within new surveys (unless you override the setting in the survey settings themselves).

2. Navigate to Survey - Language Settings to set the look-n-feel as well as the wording of the link as it will be seen in the email invitation.

At this point, your Invitation Email is ready to show the unsubscribe link on arrival.

Note: Placeholder {{questionnaire.unsubscribe_link}} uses the URL from URL unsubscribe setting (p. 1) and appends a unique Survey ID within each invitation email.

3. You can also set up the message displayed once the customer clicks the Unsubscribe link. You need to navigate to Language Settings and click the Landing Page tab. Then define the value of Landing Page - Clicked unsubscribe Link parameter.

4. Finally, beside placeholder for Email invitation, in the layout templates you may want to use a special placeholder {{questionnaire.unsubscribe}} which will expand into the value (decorated link) set in p. 2. More about the utilizing of this placeholder you can read in this article.
You will find an illustration of the approach below.

You can use the same {{questionnaire.unsubscribe}} placeholder for the plaintext version of the email. It will expand to the link set in p. 1 without any additional HTML tags from p. 2.

Additional information

If you use the SandSIV unsubscribe link, the blacklist of customers who clicked it will be maintained within the SandSIV DB. You can also request an export of the Blacklist to get the current state of the Blacklist.

For more information and details on customer Blacklist please see here.

Set up unsubscribe survey (Advanced Unsubscribe)

Starting from release 11.13.0 it's possible to conduct an unsubscribing survey to the user. This functionality requires a separate survey (survey group) and the feedback collected through this survey gives an opportunity to understand why did the user unsubscribe. 

1. Create a new DIGI survey and name it accordingly, i.e. "Unsubscribe".

2. First question type should be "Unsubscribe":

There are two question answers:
contact_unsubscribe - Unsubscribe only this specific contact (used email address of the phone number);

customer_unsubscribe - Unsubscribe from all addresses (option blocks the customer and all  addresses related to him/her);

You may select only 1 if needed by leaving the checkmark on the option you want to have.

3. Other questions can be set on demand, for instance Open question to ask for unsubscribing reason. 

4. Newly created survey can be selected in Global Settings - Common - Common options - Unsubscribe survey group to be applied to all surveys.

If you want to disable advanced unsubscribing on a survey level choose "Disable global settings" from the dropdown or remove it in Global Settings to disable it completely for all surveys. 

5. After enabling users who wants to unsubscribe will be automatically redirected to a survey when they click unsubscribe link.

Note: there's no need to edit existing email templates to allow advanced unsubscribing.

Important note:

The legacy placeholder {unsubscribe} also can be used as {{questionnaire.unsubscribe}} but{unsubscribe_link} can be used only as is.