Braze Email: Global Subscription States

Do you know the Braze Email Global Subscription States?

What’s the difference between Opted-in vs Subscribed?

Oh, and we weren’t quite done with Internal Groups 😅

🗣️ WATCH FULL YOUTUBE VIDEO HERE 🗣

[Braze-mas 2023, Day 10]

What’s up everyone, my name is Allan, Founder and Consultant at For Now Marketing, and welcome to Day 10 of Braze-mas 2023!

We’ve spent the last few videos talking about Internal Groups and the 3 different capabilities that Internal Groups offer. Today, we’re going to switch gears, revisit the User Profile, and talk about the Global Email Subscription States that Braze offers.

It’s a simple concept, yet Braze users often ask what’s the difference between Subscribed and Opted-in states, which we will cover in today’s video.

Let’s get started!

Quick Feature: Add Test User

So here we are, back at the User Profile, and before we get into Global Email Subscription States, we just have one more feature related to the Internal Groups that we would love to highlight.

It's a relatively new feature, and right here on this User Profile page, you see this “Add As Test User” button on my User Profile page. Click on this, and this allows us to easily and conveniently add the current User Profile to any of the Internal Groups that we’ve created so far.

A super cool way for Braze to make it easier to use Internal Groups. Thank you Braze!

Global Email Subscription States

All right, now we are finally ready to move on to Global Email Subscription States. So far, we’ve only explored the “Overview Tab”, but if we navigate to the “Engagement” tab, we can see our Email Subscription State, which is set to Subscribed. And we also see the other two options: Unsubscribed and Opted In.

Let’s start with Subscribed. Subscribed is the default state for all user profiles, when they are first created.

If you remember back when we first signed up for our Nike account, we actually gave our consent to sign up for emails to get updates from Nike.

And with this permission, our User Profile was created with the Email Subscription State set to Subscribed.

Many times, a brand might not necessarily provide the option to opt in or out of emails in the sign up process. In those cases, maybe in the Terms & Conditions, it says that consumers are providing their consent to receive emails from the brand after signing up, and the User Profile would also have the Email Subscription State set to Subscribed.

So Subscribed is simply the default state, and even at this state, Braze will allow us to send Marketing emails to these users, assuming that the brand has the legal right to email these users.

However, in today’s world where user consent is highly important, Braze and all their Deliverability Experts would highly recommend an explicit, opt-in process, where the user goes out of their way to actively agree to receiving emails from your brand.

Many times, this is done by sending the user a verification link in their inbox after creating their account which they must click to be opted-in to receive emails. This is called the double opt-in process: first opt-in during the sign up process, and a second opt-in afterwards through the verification link to make sure that the user actually wants to receive email and didn’t just provide consent during sign up because they just wanted to breeze through the application process.

And it is for these users who provided explicit consent that Braze recommends the superior Email Subscription State: Opted-in. If you do end up implementing this double opt-in process, you can use the Opted-in state to distinguish your dedicated users from your default users who can remain in your Subscribed state.

And of course, Braze allows us to make this distinction when we segment our audience, in two different ways:

On the Target Audiences page, if you’re sending an email or push message, you will see this dropdown where you see “Send to these users: with three options. You could use one of these options to further segment your audience based on their subscription state.

The second method is through the audience filter. If you search for the filter called “Email Subscription Status”, you’ll have complete control of the status that you want to target for this message. This way, you could isolate only those who are at the Subscribed status to get them to provide double opt-in confirmation.

And our last state is Unsubscribed. In our Nike example, if I signed up with this “sign up for emails” box unchecked, it would be best practice to add the proper logic so that the user profile is created with the Unsubscribed state in Braze. Also, more commonly, if the user clicks on the Unsubscribe link in your emails, then Braze would set the User Profile to the Unsubscribed state, and the brand should no longer send Marketing emails to this user.

Now, as you saw earlier, you still have the option to send emails to unsubscribed users. Please note that this option should only be reserved for emails where the brand is absolutely, legally obligated to send an email update to the consumer. No consumer should continue to receive any marketing emails or even emails with the slightest tint of marketing, after they’ve unsubscribed from a brand’s email list. For me personally, that’s the fastest way to get blocked from my inbox!

Thank you!

That’s it for Day 10.

If you have any questions, please share them in the comments. We’re happy to help! 🙏

If you learned something from this video, please subscribe for more awesome Braze videos in the future!

Thank you for watching, and see you next time!

allan@fornowmarketing.com

fornowmarketing.com