I was getting daily updates from a brand, which was getting too overwhelming for me. So, I went to the unsubscribe link, but I saw an option to manage my preferences.
I clicked on the link, and there was an option to change the frequency from daily to weekly.
It’s a win-win for both parties - users get to reduce email frequency, and you get to keep your valuable subscribers.
So, preference centers can help reduce your unsubscribe rate, among other benefits. Besides email frequency, there are many options you can include in your preference center. In this guide, we will cover all that.
Table of contents
- What is a preference center?
- Benefits of having a preference center
- What can you include in the preference center?
- Email preference center best practices
- Actionable tips to make users use your preference center
- Conclusion
What is a preference center?
Preference center is a page or a dashboard on your website that allows subscribers to customize the emails they want to receive from your organizations. It enables users to opt-out of certain emails and gets more relevant emails.
A preference center isn’t a legal requirement like an unsubscribe link, but having one can give your organization many advantages.
Benefits of having a preference center
Benefits that you can get via preference center are as follows:
✅ Helps in reducing unsubscribe rate
Users may unsubscribe due to many reasons, such as
- Irrelevant emails
- Frequent emails
- Changes in interests, etc.
A preference center can help resolve these issues by giving users options to opt out of certain emails instead of opting out of all emails altogether. It will, in turn, help in reducing your email unsubscribe rate.
✅ Helps you get deeper insights into your subscribers
You can get deeper insights into subscriber preferences such as what kind of emails they prefer, whether they want daily or weekly updates, and so on. Using all this data, you can:
Segment email list based on subscriber preferences.
Send more relevant and personalized emails.
Create a more targeted automation flow.
✅ Leads to increase in email deliverability
If you send emails that users want, then the chances of getting email delivered to their inbox increase. Besides, more relevant and targeted emails will lead to higher engagements. It will also enhance your email marketing metrics such as email deliverability.
✅ A great way to collect first-party data
Getting insights into users’ behavior might be difficult as Google plans to end support for third-party cookies by the end of 2022. In such cases, the preference center serves an important role. You can collect first-party customer data to safely run your email campaigns.
What can you include in the preference center?
There are many options that you can offer in your preference center. Some of the most useful are as follows:
📋 Email content preferences
One of the most basic preferences to give users is to include different kinds of emails you send. You can offer the following options regarding the email content-
• Email type: If you offer various emails, such as newsletters and promotional emails, you can add all these options in your preference center. For instance, Mailmodo offers three different varieties of emails subscribers can choose from:
Topics or interests: Knowing your users’ interests can help you develop a more segmented and personalized email campaign. Besides, if you offer different products and services, you can ask users about what product they are most interested in.
For instance, Adidas allows its users to personalize their emails based on their interests:
- Language preferences: If your subscriber database is spread across different nations and languages, then you must give an option to change the language as per their choice.
⌛ Frequency and timings of the emails
Frequency and timings are highly relevant to the content of your emails. Sometimes, users like your emails but want them less often. In that case, giving them the option to reduce the number of emails or adjust the timings can be really helpful. If you send many emails, you can customize the frequency and timings in many different ways:
Daily, weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly.
Emails on specific days as MarketingProfs do:
- Snooze emails: Sometimes, users want to stop receiving emails during a specific period, say, during a family vacation. Oracle offers this option in its marketing newsletter.
Source - Oracle
🔓 User’s personal information
You can use a preference center to allow users to give and update their personal information such as email addresses, zip code, date of birth, etc. When collecting that information, it is wise to mention how you will use it. For instance, the ABC widget collects the following personal information.
📢 Channel preference
Do you know the preference center need not be just email-centric?
You use them as a holistic communication hub to let users choose their preferred channel to hear from you. So, for example, it might be via SMS, push notification, etc.
Spotify has done a great job by giving users an option to select the channel they prefer to hear from them.
Email preference center best practices
Now that you know what you can offer in your email preference centers, you must know how to design or create them. We have curated a list of best practices that you can follow:
1. Add an unsubscribe button in your preference center
If you are going to replace the unsubscribe link with a preference center link, you must provide an option to opt-out of all of the emails. It will help you remain compliant with various acts such as CAN-SPAM, GDPR, etc.
But, in case you want to have both unsubscribe and preference center links in your emails, it’s still a good idea to have an unsubscribe option in your preference center.
Sometimes users click on the manage the preferences link but don’t like anything you offer. In such cases, having an unsubscribe link can be helpful 👇
2. Keep everything on a single page
Ensure that everything is on a single page so that users don’t have to go to more steps to manage their email preferences.
3. Make it responsive
Your preference page should be responsive for different devices and screen sizes like your emails.
4. Be transparent and brief with your subscribers
You must tell subscribers what each selection means or what they can expect if they select a certain option. And if you are asking them about their personal information, such as their date of birth, you must inform them why and how you would use that information.
So, you have your preference center ready, but how do you make subscribers use it? Obviously, you can’t just sit and wait. You need to make users aware of it. So how do you do that?
Actionable tips to make users use your preference center
Here are some steps that you can take to make your audience aware of the preference center:
• Send emails telling users about your preference center
Straightforward right?
One of the easiest methods is to create an email informing subscribers that you’ve got a preference center for them and ask them to have a look at it.
Look at how Autotrader did it:
Source: Really Good Emails
• Add it to your welcome emails
So, you have got a new subscriber, and they will probably get a welcome email. You can make a better first impression by briefing them on what they signed up for and giving them an option to manage their preferences. It will help build trust and make them feel that you care about their interests and preferences.
• Make it easy to locate in all your emails
One of the easiest ways to get people to notice the preference center is to add it in your email footer near the unsubscribe link. In this way, if they unsubscribe, they notice that they can manage their preferences instead of opting out entirely.
Conclusion
An email preference center is a great way to generate higher email marketing ROI and help retain users by providing them with the content they want.
How cool is it that your users are telling you what they want from your brand?
So, start creating your preference center if you haven’t had one by following the best practices mentioned above.
