Managing Email Unsubscribes and Communication Preferences

DonorDock includes several settings to track how contacts want to be contacted.

These settings help your organization respect donor preferences while also distinguishing between fundraising solicitation, bulk marketing email, and text communication.

Communication Preference Settings

Do Not Solicit

Do Not Solicit is primarily a reporting and segmentation setting.

It can identify contacts who have asked not to receive fundraising solicitations through channels such as email, phone, or mail.

Contacts marked Do Not Solicit are excluded from applicable report results by default.

If you need to include them in a Contact report:

1. Open the Contact report.

2. Click Filters button on the top left

3. Select Include Do Not Solicit.

4. Run the report.

Use Do Not Solicit when building reports or Marketing Lists for fundraising and other solicitation efforts so these contacts can be identified and excluded appropriately.

To prevent bulk marketing emails, the contact must be Unsubscribed.

To prevent text messages, the contact must be SMS Unsubscribed.

Unsubscribed

The Unsubscribed status prevents a contact from receiving bulk marketing emails sent through DonorDock Outreach.

Contacts can become unsubscribed by:

• Clicking the unsubscribe link included in a bulk marketing email

• Being manually unsubscribed from their contact record

All bulk marketing emails sent through DonorDock automatically include an unsubscribe option.

The Unsubscribe Merge Tag

DonorDock automatically adds an unsubscribe link to bulk marketing emails.

If you want to control where the unsubscribe link appears in the email, you can add the following merge tag directly to the content: {{unsubscribe}}

The merge tag is generated only for bulk marketing emails.

It will not populate in:

• Transactional Templates

• Gift receipts

• Contribution statements

• Individual Send Email activities

Marketing List Opt-Outs

Marketing Lists can be configured as Available for Opt Out.

When this setting is enabled, contacts receiving an email sent to that Marketing List can choose to unsubscribe from that specific list rather than unsubscribing from all marketing communication.

For example, a contact may choose to unsubscribe from:

Event Updates

while remaining subscribed to:

Monthly Newsletter

Only Marketing Lists with Available for Opt Out enabled appear as individual options on the unsubscribe page.

Contacts still retain the option to unsubscribe from all bulk marketing emails.

Individual Emails and Unsubscribed Contacts

The Unsubscribed status applies to bulk marketing email.

A contact who is unsubscribed can still receive:

• An individual Send Email activity

• Transactional emails such as gift receipts

• Contribution statements

If a contact has directly asked your organization not to receive email communication at all, your team should still respect that request when deciding whether to send an individual message.

SMS Unsubscribed

Email and SMS subscription statuses are managed separately.

A contact can unsubscribe from text messages by replying STOP to your organization's DonorDock SMS number.

Once the contact is SMS Unsubscribed, DonorDock will not send additional text messages to that contact.

A contact can resubscribe by replying START to your organization's SMS number.

View the Unsubscribe Report

The Unsubscribe Report can help you identify when contacts unsubscribed and which bulk email led to the unsubscribe.

To open the report:

1. Navigate to Reporting > Reports.

2. Locate Standard Activity Reports.

3. Select Unsubscribe Report.

The report can include information such as:

• Contact email address

• Spouse email address, when applicable

• Current subscription status

• Date the contact unsubscribed

• Subject line of the email from which the unsubscribe link was selected

A contact may appear more than once if they have unsubscribed, resubscribed, and later unsubscribed again.

Use the Currently Subscribed column to determine the contact's present subscription status.

Contacts who are manually unsubscribed directly from their contact record do not appear on the Unsubscribe Report.

Choosing the Correct Preference

A simple way to think about these settings is:

Using the appropriate setting helps your organization maintain accurate communication preferences without unnecessarily excluding contacts from communication they still want to receive.