Preference Center functionality is now available for our beta group of clients (as of January 9, 2024). We plan to release this to a wider group by January 16.
Preference Center will be available to Ascent360 Professional and Enterprise customers. If you are interested in upgrading, please contact support@ascent360.com. If you are on a Pro or Enterprise plan, contact Ascent360 for assistance with turning this feature on.
Audience > Preference Center
The Preference Center provides a space where Ascent360 users can define a number of Subscriber Groups, or Preferences, allowing marketing recipients to opt in and out of specific marketing communications.
The Preference Center allows your recipients to self-select the marketing communication they receive from you and provides you with a new dimension of data about your customers that may otherwise be unavailable from your integrated source systems. What's more, using a Preference Center gives your subscribers an option other than globally unsubscribing, allowing you to maintain your relationship with a greater number of marketable leads.
If you are not using the Ascent360 ESP to send emails, you can still take advantage of the Preference Center. Your ESP will not automatically add a link to the Preference Center in your emails, so be sure to copy the link to the Preference Center Landing Page in the Landing Page settings.
Create Your Preference Center
A Preference Center is a webpage hosted by Ascent360 where your subscribers can update their marketing preferences based on the groups defined by you. Preferences are defined and managed on the Preference Center page in the Audience drop-down of the Ascent360 Portal. On this page, you can add, remove, edit, or reorder the Subscriber Groups that recipients see when they access the Preference Center. Once you've made your desired changes, be sure to Publish to push your changes to your Preference Center form.
If it's your first time accessing the Preference Center, begin by creating one or more Subscriber Groups in the top right. Provide a Group Name to add a group. The Group Name is what your recipients will see on the Preference Center form, so be descriptive and concise (less than 50 characters).
The Group order displayed on the Preference Center page is the same order that will be shown to your subscribers. If you want to set a new order, drag the Group Name to a new position and click Publish.
Once you are satisfied with your Subscriber Groups, Publish your Preference Center. When your Preference Center is published and if you are using the Ascent360 ESP, you'll have the option to add a Manage Preferences row to your emails going forward.
If you are not using the Ascent360 ESP, you can copy the link to the Preference Center Landing Page within the Landing Page settings and insert this as a link in your emails as needed.
Customize Your Preference Center
Each time you Publish in the Preference Center, Ascent360 will update your Preference Center Landing Page with the current Subscriber Group names and order you have defined. If you are publishing for the first time, Ascent360 will create the Preference Center Landing Page for you.
You can customize the look & feel of the Preference Center page further by clicking Customize on the Preference Center page or directly through the Landing Pages library (Landing Pages > All Landing Pages). Customizing your Landing Page is optional, and unlike other forms in Ascent360, you don't have to explicitly publish your Preference Center Landing Page.
To customize your Preference Center Landing Page, open the Landing Page editor and add content blocks above and below the Form content block. Once you are satisfied with your changes, click Save.
When your recipients access your Preference Center, their existing preferences (if any) will be pre-populated for the user to easily make updates.
You cannot add, remove, or edit Subscriber Groups from the Landing Page editor. These actions must be done and Published from the Preference Center management page.
Create Audiences with Subscriber Groups
After you have published your Preference Center, you can create audiences in Audience Builder based on your Subscriber Groups. In Audience Builder, you'll see two new fields:
- Subscriber Group Name: a picklist of the Subscriber Groups you have defined.
- Submission Date: the most recent date a user submitted their Preferences.
The exact logic of your Subscriber Groups audiences will vary based on your marketing strategy and group definition, but most audiences will be sufficient to include the Subscriber Group Name field only. From there, your Subscriber Group audiences can be treated like a normal audience, including usage for Seed and Suppression lists.
If you wish to combine Subscriber Group fields with other fields from Audience Builder, we recommend creating separate audiences and combining them in Complex Audience Builder.
Rename Subscriber Groups
If you wish to rename your subscriber group, click the three dots > Manage > Edit on the group in the Preference Center. If you group is actively used in any audiences, you may wish to adjust or remove those audiences after renaming the group (Ascent360 will not automatically adjust your audiences for you).
Disable Subscriber Groups
If you wish to disable a Subscriber Group, click the three dots > Manage > Disable on the group in the Preference Center. If your group is actively used in any audiences, you may wish to adjust or remove those audiences after disabling the group (Ascent360 will not automatically adjust your audiences for you).
When a Group is disabled and the Preference Center is published, Ascent360 will remove the group from your Preference Center Landing Page.
Activate a Subscriber Group
If you wish to activate an inactive Subscriber Group, navigate to the Inactive Groups tab of the Preference Center and click the three dots > Activate on the Group.
When a Group is activated and the Preference Center is published, Ascent360 will add the group to your Preference Center Landing Page.
Delete Your Preference Center
If you wish to fully remove all groups in your Preference Center and unpublish the Preference Center Landing Page, click the Delete Preference Center button in the bottom right of your Preference Center. This action will bulk delete all current Subscriber Groups and unpublish the Preference Center Landing Page. If your groups are being used in any audiences, you may wish to adjust or remove these audiences as well (Ascent360 will not automatically adjust your audiences for you).
Best Practices
- How you define Subscriber Groups is up to you. You can choose to route all of your marketing communication through Subscriber Groups or choose to have your Subscriber Groups act as an addition to your normal communications.
- Prior to committing to frequency-based Subscriber Groups, be sure to evaluate your current suite of audiences and the overall marketing communication that a subscriber may receive from you. If you already have successful drip campaigns for purchase behavior or prospect conversion, you may want to alter those audiences to exclude specific subscriber groups or narrow the scope of your frequency-based subscriber group. For example, provide once-a-month and twice-a-month newsletter groups that don't have any bearing on number of post-purchase emails a subscriber could receive.
- If you have a Preference Center set up, always include a link to it in the footer of your emails.
- Be sure to leverage preferences when sending out emails; don't ask subscribers for their preferences and then ignore those preferences.
Need further assistance? Contact our help desk or your CSM and we'd be happy to help.
