How can I allow customers to opt-out of certain types of mailings?

Environment:

Oracle B2C Service Outreach, Audiences, Contact Opt-in/out options

Resolution:

Within Oracle B2C Service Outreach, you can add additional custom contact fields that can be used to specify which types of mailings the contact would like to be opted in to receive. For each of your different types of mailings, you can create additional opt-in fields that display on the Contact record and can be enabled for end-user editability on the My Account - Profile page.

For example, you can create additional opt-in values for different types of mailings, including newsletters, product notifications, promotions, and customer service notifications. Then, you can create segments that use the appropriate opt-in field(s) as filters for your mailing audience.

Oracle B2C Service Outreach includes a system-defined Global Opt-In field that can be used to filter contacts based on the value of the field. You can use this system field to supercede all other custom fields that are set up as an opt-in data type. That is, you can define audience segments to only send the mailing if the Global Opt-In field is set to Yes or is Unspecified.

The Global Opt-In field is not automatically evaluated or included when defining a mailing list or segment.

Though the global opt-in is not included automatically when defining a list or segment, when you create a mailing, the Audience tab defaults to honor the global opt-in so that the mailing is sent only to contacts whose global opt-in field is set to Yes or if the field is null.  With this default audience, only contacts whose records have the global opt-in set to No are excluded from receiving the mailing.

For more information on excluding mailings from contacts who are opted out, refer to Answer ID 2350: Preventing mailings from being sent to opted-out contacts. For more information on creating segments, refer to Answer 1954: Creating a contact list or a segment for a mailing or survey.

To add a custom opt-in field: Use the steps below:

1. From the Configuration items, select Database > Custom Fields > Contacts.
2. Click the New button on the ribbon to add a Custom Field.
3. Set the Data Type to be Opt-in.
4. Enter the Common and Language names along with a default value if you wish.
5. Enable the visibility for the appropriate consoles.
6. To allow end-users the ability to edit the field from the My Account - Profiles page, enable the End-user: Read/Write checkboxes in the Visibility section.
7. Click Save.
8. Open new consoles to verify that the field displays and can be edited from the appropriate areas of the product.
9. Log in to your end-user pages to verify that the end-user can edit (or not access) the field as you wish to have it configured.

For more information regarding opt-in options, refer to the 'Managing contact opt-ins' section in online documentation for the version your site is currently running.  To access Oracle B2C Service manuals and documentation online, refer to the Documentation for Oracle B2C Service Products.