Collect and Manage Data

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

Determine data configuration requirements.
Update subscriber status in the All Subscribers list.

Data Management

Data is at the heart of a custom preference center. But you can’t just collect the data, you need to take action based on that data. First things first. Where do you go to find the most reliable and up-to-date customer data? This location is your database of record (DBOR for short). Your first priority is to update the data in your DBOR using the data collected from your preference center. In addition to your DBOR, identify all other places data is stored and how often it should be updated.

Managing Unsubscribes

A marketer’s key responsibility is to honor a subscriber’s preferences and ethically use their data. Managing unsubscribe requests is the most important data-related task of a custom preference center. And the lawyers agree. While local regulations vary, to be CAN-SPAM compliant in the US all unsubscribes need to be accounted for within 10 days. But we recommend you process unsubscribe requests as soon as possible. As you might’ve guessed, when a customer clicks unsubscribe from your preference center, they aren’t magically unsubscribed. A process needs to be created in order to manage the request.

As the source of email subscriber status in Marketing Cloud Engagement, it’s best practice to directly manage email unsubscribes on the All Subscribers list—even if you store subscriber status in other places. Besides updating the list manually or creating a multistep automation in Automation Studio, the recommended way to update this list is via API. Use a LogUnsubEvent execute call to search for and automatically update a user’s subscriber status in All Subscribers.

Account Setup

After considering your top priorities of updating your DBOR and managing unsubscribes, let’s review a few other data considerations based on your account setup.

Parent and Child Business Units

If you have multiple business units in your account, you need to decide how to handle subscriber preferences for each. Should a subscriber be globally opted out of email or only at a specific business unit level? If branding and data separation matter, each business unit should have its own custom preference center page and unsubscribe option.

Subscriber Key

A subscriber key (also called a contact key) is a unique value that identifies a subscriber in Marketing Cloud Engagement. The type of key you use can impact your preference management. If you are using an email address as your subscriber key in Email Studio, you may run into issues if a household shares one email address or if you also want to manage mobile preferences—which might use a separate key. It’s best practice to use a single, unique contact key across Marketing Cloud Engagement that does not relate to a specific communication channel.

Communication Channels

What channels do you want to manage from your preference center? Updating email subscriptions is different from managing mobile opt-ins and opt-outs. Even if you are only sending email now, future-proof your preference center by thinking about how you can update mobile going forward. You can manage any channel preference using a subscriber preference data extension, but be sure you’ve considered how you process opt-outs in mobile.

Review SMS API documentation to see how you can manage SMS subscriptions using API.

Next Up: Document Requirements

Once you have an idea of your process and how preferences should be updated, it is helpful to create a solution document to guide you or your team through the development of your preference pages. To help you do this, in the next unit, we review the preference center requirements for Cumulus Bank.