How to Handle Customer Preferences

Recording of Office Hours hosted by Chris Davis on October 9, 2018. In this session, we covered whether to use lists, tags, or custom fields to handle unsubscribes. We also showed you a use case that requires the use of multiple lists.

Transcript

Chris Davis: 00:01 All right. Oh, look at that. With that in mind, we do have a question. Matt. Matt, welcome. What a last name, Matt. I love your last name. Is it Seuss or is it Su-ess? I don’t want to mess it up. I’m tempted to say Seuss just because of Dr. Seuss, but you let me know. All right, great. It is. My love for your name is warranted. Great name, and welcome. I don’t think I’ve seen you on Office Hour, so welcome. I’m excited to have you on. At least I haven’t had you personally. All right, so let’s work through. Oh Clive, hey. Clive, thank you. Clive I think you’re a new name too, so listen. For all the new people, I won’t call you all out by name, but I just want to say welcome. Welcome to all the new people. And let’s walk through this.

All right. New to AC, still not sure if I should handle unsubscribes via list, ooh, or via tags and custom fields. I’m gonna grab a drink real quick. Great question, absolutely great question. I’m excited to answer this already. I have two main newsletters that go out to prospects and customers. One, for those interested in my fine art photos, and the other for those interested in my photo education. And a handful of different online courses that I need to update registered students. Some people do sign up for both main newsletter, so not sure if I should do one or two master lists as well.

All right. So, here’s a couple questions, just let me know in the chat, Matt. One of them is … Okay, well hold on, you say you have two … I have two main newsletters. Okay. So, you have a newsletter that goes out to prospects and customers. The only thing I need to know at this point is how are your lists set up? Do you have lists set up as customers and prospects? Or is your list set up differently? Because that will inform how I advise you on this one.

While you’re answering that I’ll bring up my list here. Just let me know in the chat, and here’s the reason why I ask is if you have a prospect list and a customer list, the best way to handle communication across multiple lists will be using tags, and custom fields. Okay? Okay, all right. So, Matt says, “Coming from Infusionsoft and MailChimp, so had a main list that was segregated via tags.” Okay, great. Great. So, in that case Matt, I would say ….

So, let me let you into my thought process for a second. If you were using a prospect list and a customer list, here’s what I would have recommended you do for the easy approach. Now, this is easy. The strongest and most flexible is tags, and custom fields. But let’s say we’re … I know I have a unsubscribe form. Let me just show you what I mean. A lot of people don’t know this exists. Testing unsubscribes. Okay. Excuse me. So, what you’ll do is if you go to standard, check this out. We have this action called list selector, so you bring this over and now it’s gonna display, if I click on options, any list that this form subscribes to.

So, if I wanna add another list, subscribe to list, and then say Zendesk. Opt-in confirmation off. Add, you’ll see it’s added here. So, what happens is now when someone comes here and it’s like, sorry to see you go … sorry to … oh my goodness. To see … oh my gosh. See you go. Please update your preferences below. Right? So they click to unsubscribe, they come here, and then they can see at this point they’ve been unsubscribed from everything, I’m assuming. They have the link that they click, unsubscribes them from everything, and they get here and they can say, “Oh, you know, I still wanna get live event updates.” They select it, then hit submit, and then they’re actually resubscribed to that list. All right?

So, that is doing it by list. But that only works Matt, when you have multiple lists, which I actually like your setup, you know? And I know you’re familiar with having a master list and using tags, so I would recommend using tags and custom fields to balance out that unsubscribe, to use for the unsubscribe, and here’s what it looks like. I’m gonna delete that, and instead I can go to fields, my field. I wonder if I have one, on … sub, nope. What is it? Communication, ready for ongoing … please select the type of communication you would like to receive from us. Perfect. I knew I had a custom field. So, look at that. It looks the same, right? It looks the exact same, but this is a checkbox custom field that I created. Okay?

So now, the same thing happens Matt, right? The same process, they click the unsubscribe link, they’re unsubscribed and they come to this form, and it’s saying, “Hey, sorry to see you go. Please update your preferences below”, and this will auto-populate their name and email. I can show you how to do that. So, they come here. All they have to do is select oh, I wanna keep getting cat food training offers. They hit submit, and now the reason why I didn’t say this was easy, because there’s a second step involved if we use tags in custom fields. All right? And here’s what that looks like. So first, let me open a new window here … and show you what would be required.

I think the name for this automation is sort. I think it’s like cat and dog. Sort. All right. So, I’ll do this one. Look at this. Master resubscribe sorting … that looks very accurate to what I’m trying to do. What will happen is this, this form is called testing unsubscribes. Now, whenever it’s filled out, we know that it could only be filled out by somebody clicking the unsubscribe link, because this is just not a page that somebody can stumble across and will put their information in. Right? So, this is an opt-in form, but it’s a gated opt-in form. What is it gated by? It’s gated by an unsubscribe link. I know that’s kinda different language.

Most of the time we hear gated content, it’s used in a different form, but our form here is gated by an unsubscribe link, which is just another way of saying the only way they can get here is by unsubscribing. So, I now know the only audience that this is visible to, this form is gonna be visible to are people who have unsubscribed, and the only action that they can take is to resubscribe. Their options to resubscribe are right here, so any time this form gets filled out, I know someone wants to resubscribe, Matt.

So, now I can build an automation that looks for that form. Okay? And this one is test, test unsubscribes, okay? And I want it to run any time someone comes back or wants to come back. And now, when they fill out this form, what I could do, you know what I wanna do? I’m gonna build this new. I don’t wanna mess with this. I don’t wanna mess with this, because I wanna show you Matt, what it looks like. So, let me just copy this. All right, and edit the automation. There we go. So, now let’s change this to our actual form, testing unsubscribes, multiple times, and now …

So, everybody … remove both yes and now. So, everybody brace yourselves. I’m gonna use some language that’s external to our platform, but Matt, you’re gonna know exactly what I’m talking about. You no longer … So, what this is like Matt, is using a decision diamond, what I’m about to show you. And these are nested if else’s, but they are equivalent to decision diamonds in your previous platform, all right? So, when I do that, what I would do is do if else, and what is it? Communication you would like to receive is dog. If it is, then I’m gonna tag them, okay? And i’m just, I’m tagging them just to tag them. I have this information in a custom field, but …

Message type, dog. So, they wanna receive messaging on dog. If not, let’s look for the next one. There’s three options. Is cat food? And if they say yes, then I’m going to tag them. Message type, cat. And then lastly, if they didn’t fill out this, didn’t fill out this, I need to check for the last one, and say communication is updates and offers about rats. I don’t know what my example was here. Dogs, cats, and rats everybody. And then I can tag them. Message type rat, message type. See that? And if I wanted them to be able to select all three, or are many, right now it’s set up like a radio button. So, they can only really select one message type, but if I had it set up where they could select multiple types of messaging, I would just need to use a go-to, to check after I tag them, and check if they opted in for anything else. And then end this automation.

So, let me zoom out here. Or let me make my screen bigger. All right? Just for the time now. So, you see these nested if else, when they submit that unsubscribe form, I’m coming in, did you say dog? Yep. Add the tag,. Next. Did you say cat? Nope. Did you say rat? Nope. End. But if they selected two, did you say dog? Yes. Come here, go to the next. Did you say cat? Yes. Tag your cat. Did you say rat? No. End the automation. So, now the tags are effectively adding people to the appropriate … the tags are adding people to the appropriate buckets. Okay?

Let me see. Okay. Okay, Matt. I didn’t see this. So, it looks like you’re up to speed and I may be … all right. So he said, “Saw both of the videos you did in Office Hours on those two ways and we’re have …” Okay, great. If by using tags, non-students would see the option to sign up to student only communication. No way to hide that to students only. If not, then just use the automation to auto-unsubscribe them. If a non-student signs up for not a student communication, absolutely. So, let’s do … oh my goodness, I love this example.

So, here’s what I would recommend doing, is something like this … dog training, can I … I can’t change it here. I have to change it at the custom field. Let me show you. Let me show you exactly what I’m thinking. Let me show you exactly what I’m thinking. This is gonna solve it immediately. Be patient. Where is it? I need to see all of it. Reorder fields. Please select a type of communication. So, I’m gonna edit this. And let’s say dog training is … how about, I’m gonna add an option that says customer offers. Okay?

Save that. Here we go. Go back to my form here. Let me reload it, and it should now pull in … there. Customer offers. So, now in your case, a non-student can come here and see this, and guess what? They can click here. But, here’s what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna use my automation to say if no, I’m gonna add another case here. Say communication is customer offers? I’m gonna add a clause, and let me delete this. And if they said yes, I’m gonna do one more check. And what I’m gonna do is do they … oh. I was so close.

Do they have the customer tag? Customer tag. Okay? Because if they have the customer tag, then I am gonna give them the tag. Customer … I don’t have one that says customer communication. So, I’ll say message type … customer only. I’ll create it. All right? Message type, customer only. And then if they did not select anything, I’m gonna end this automation, and if they selected they want a customer only offers and they’re not a customer, well guess what. You don’t get what you asked for.

You go to end this automation. So, that’s gonna be your automation, Matt, is gonna save a non-student from filling this out and starting to get customer offers. Okay? There’s an additional step. We’re not done though. There’s an additional step here, that’s required. So, now we have our automation. Let me say … where’s the resubscribe? Custom fields. Okay, I’m gonna call it that. So, now we have all of our management of messaging. There’s some other steps that we need to take though, okay?

So, since we’re now managing our preferences via tags, we need to go in here, and this is probably the part that I didn’t have in the video you watched Matt, but if it was in there, let me know. And I will be surprised myself. What you need to do here, you now need to create segments for each one of your message types. So, let me rewind for a second. This is why I love this question so much Matt, and Clive, I have not forgot about you. I have your question, we’re gonna come to you next. In fact, your question ties into Matt’s question, so I’m glad you asked it.

So, here’s the deal. One of the first things that I recommend everybody do before, and granted, this is so tricky because here at ActiveCampaign, we want you to start using the app as soon as possible. But I wanna teach you a responsible approach that’s going to ensure that you have longevity and success with ActiveCampaign, and here’s what it is. Before you jump into the tool, and this is, again, responsible marketing practice, step outside of the tool and just jot down the type of messaging that you’re going to send.

If you don’t know the type of messaging, then jot down the groups of people that you’re going to communicate. What I’m asking you is that you create your segments before you create anything else. So Matt, in your case, I can easily see where you could sit down, before you sign up for any other platform, and said, “Okay, I wanna send information about fine art photos, and I wanna send … So, I wanna send information about fine art photos, and then I wanna send information about photo education.” All right? And I also have course communication. So, those are three types of messaging.

Okay, great. Clive said, “Matt, your question is very helpful for him as well.” Thank you so much, for that feedback Clive. So Matt, here it is. I have three segments. The fine art photos, photo education, and courses. Those are my three mains of communicating. So now, I’m gonna … and you can honestly do this before you even import your contacts, because you’re gonna … since you’re using custom fields, to manage your messaging, custom fields and segments go hand in hand. There’s no way to have one without the other, okay?

So, since we’re managing by tags, which by the way I personally manage my tags, so this is literally my framework too. But if we’re gonna manage by tags, then we need to have segments. If we’re going to manage our communication by list, we just need lists. And that’s why lists make things so much simpler in this case, when you only have a couple. Now, when your lists grow, you run into an entirely different set of complications, which I prefer not to mess with. So, I just do by tags. I come from the same school of teaching as you, Matt. I started on different platforms, and I’m just more comfortable. And it’s more flexible.

Once you set it up this way, you can literally set this and forget it. You just check in on it every now and then, but it will always manage the appropriate sending for you. All right. And here’s why it works with the master list, Matt. Okay. And let me know if I’m losing anybody at any time. So, if I manage my messaging by tags, I have to have segments to reach those tags. Okay? I’m using tags, to understand what type of messaging you want, and I’m applying those tags to the contacts. To reach those contacts with that messaging, I need a segment. Okay?

So, let’s say tags are destination, segments are the vehicles to get there. All right? So, I use by way of segmentation, I can target the tags and reach the appropriate contacts. All right. So, let’s create our segment. So, you would have three segments, and in this case the segments are gonna be the exact same criteria as the tag. So, when I go here, and now we see that I didn’t necessarily need to create a tag, but I like to create tags in case you’re using them in third-party software somewhere else, because I could just go straight to the custom field, and say if the custom field matches dog, right? And then I could create a segment.

And we’ll do that. No, we won’t, because I don’t wanna confuse anything. But what we’re gonna use, is we are gonna use the tag, so contact details, tag, message type, dog. Okay? If that exists, and you have to do a search, should come … oh wow, look at that. There’s one person. Then hit save as segment … and I actually think I already have a segment. Let me just make sure because I don’t wanna make it confusing. Let me see here. Segments. Do I have one for dogs? I don’t have a dog. Well, let me look at my master. That’s the teller of all segments.

Segments, do I have … dog messaging. So, I do. So, here I have dog messaging, rat, and cat messaging. And then customer messaging, all right? So, how we create those segments, is by using the tag criteria and hitting save as segment, you can say dog messaging. Okay? I hit save, and then it will show up here as dog messaging. Okay? So, you’ll want a segment for every tag condition, or every message type. All right? And the reason why, the reason why is, let me think here. Yeah. The reason why is because now when you go to send your newsletter, you have your automation, working on your behalf, always managing what type of messaging they want.

And remember, you can apply these tags throughout link clicks and emails. If you send an email and you’re like, “Hey, just launched a new education series on photography. Fine art photography. Click here if you’re interested.” You send that out in an email, excuse me, and they click a link, you can also apply this tag there. And that’s what I’m saying. Like Matt, you’re using the strongest way of managing, because now when …

It doesn’t matter how they get the tag. They can even get the tag external to ActiveCampaign. It doesn’t matter. Maybe you’re doing a onsite check-in with like Eventbrite or something like that. And the event is for everybody interested in education, like photo education, and you can just let them know, like, “Hey, if you’d like to receive ongoing photo education, just fill out this form on my iPad.” Right? They fill it out, or they check into the event, the tag is added, and then as long as they have the tag, they’re gonna be dumped into this segment. Okay?

So, that’s why managing by tags, and custom fields is so powerful, because we break free of some of the limitations of lists, and we’re now able to let people determine what they’re interested in, regardless of the platform they’re engaging with our business in. And now, this is why we had to do that upfront work to know our messaging type, because our messaging type is not limited to the ActiveCampaign. It should be across your entire business. Right? Your websites should be conducive to your messaging type.

Your live events, your courses, your everything external should match the messaging type that you’re sending, because your message types, they reflect your segments, and your segments have to be consistent across your business. Okay? So now the tags can be applied at any point, they’re gonna be added to my dog messaging, and here’s where it gets really powerful. I said dog messaging, but my preferred messaging type. Now, whenever I go to send a new campaign, I can say news, I can say photo, education, newsletter for August. Oh, where are we at? We’re in October. October.

I wanna send October’s newsletter, I go here, watch how easy. I say my master list, since you’re using one list, and then I select my segment, dog messaging. Boom. I’m done. That’s it. Hit next. That’s all I have to do, and now I’m only going to send the people who have that tag, are the only ones that are gonna get this email. So, I don’t have to worry about … I know another platform you have to kind of do the work before time, and I think it was saved searches in the platform you were using, Matt. And then you determine that criteria, then you select save search.

This is equivalent to that. You create a segment, and the segments are automatically updated so you don’t need to always create a new segment. The segment with that tag, if somebody does not have that tag, they’ll be removed from this segment. Thus, they will not receive this messaging. So, you’re being true to your word, because when they unsubscribe, you’re removing all of those tags. Okay? I mean, when they unsubscribe, they’re removed from the master list. That’s what I meant to say. That’s a more accurate statement.

When they unsubscribe, they’re removed from this master list, so even if they still have those tags, they can’t receive it because they’re not on the list. Does that make sense? So, when they unsubscribe, because that was a question I had. Oh wait a minute, do I need to remove those tags? Well, when they unsubscribe form the list, since everybody’s on this master list, it doesn’t matter if they still have those tags. They can’t receive the communication, even though they’re in this segment because they’re no longer subscribed to that list.

So, that’s how it all works. And that’s why you create a segment for every message type, or every tag that you have that represents the message type. Yeah. So, yeah, great. Matt, it’s making sense. I’m so glad it’s making sense. And so, Matt says, “Is there any way to see who is now not in the master list?” Absolutely. So, what I could do is this. Since I have my messaging type as a tag, this is the important part of having that as that. Let me clear the search and just go back to my standard. Look at this. I can look and see who has my dog, and I’m using this. My dog message type, and then look at this. List, and who is on my main list. Okay? So, this is everybody who has the messaging type, and is on the master list. Okay? If you wanna see who is not on that message, on that master list, you can create a segment for that as well, and say tag, is the appropriate message type … message type, and then and … action, is not in list, main. Now, this is gonna give you a whole different segment of folks that you can reach out to. I think it was master list. Master list.

In his search, this should be nobody. Yeah. But if in your case, that would show everybody who has unsubscribed, that was once interested in your dog messaging type. Why is this important? Oh my God. I’m trying not to get excited. Why is this important Matt, that you asked that question? Clive, I see your second question, I’m gonna answer both your questions in a second. Why is this important? Because now … you can’t email these people because they unsubscribed. But they expressed interest in a particular message type, right? So, why not export their email addresses, import it as a custom audience, I’m just providing an example here. You don’t have to do it this way, but what I want you to think about is how can I target them with dog message, with the message type that they prefer, on other channels. And maybe Facebook is one of them. So, now I can export everybody that I can’t email but they expressed interest, and maybe I just wanna put ads in front of them. Right? It’s an option. But now we have the power to start thinking outside, because with every message type, with every segment, we have the inverse of the people who became, who decided not to be in that segment anymore. And the key is what are we doing with them?

So, if we wanted to, if it made sense, we could have … just to be safe, but if we did it this way, we would lose out on the ability to re-target them, but I know that there’s some people that do this. They do this right here. I’m gonna show you. And this could work. This could work, actually. Unsubscribes. From the main, the master list. When they unsubscribe from the master list, what you’re gonna do is remove all the message tags. Okay? Message dog … it would be nice to be able to remove multiple tags, at once, right?

Maybe that’s an idea that I post. But having to do this one by one is, you know, it can get kinda repetitive, redundant. It can get kind of [cosed 00:29:49] to automation. How about that? Already say rat. All right. So, now we can, when we have this … manual, message, removal. I don’t wanna say manual because I’m not doing it manual. Say unsubscribe, message removal. That’s more accurate, right? So, now when they unsubscribe from that master list, we’ll just do our due diligence and remove the tag as well. Just in case, as a fail-safe, so that they don’t get emailed because we don’t wanna do that. Okay? And it doesn’t matter, they’ll click the link, they’ll unsubscribe, all of this will be removed, and at the same time, they can say, wherever it went. Here it is. they could be … so when they click the link, when they click the link … where am I? This automation runs immediately. They click the link, they’re unsubscribed, all of the message type is removed. Now, they have an opportunity, now they’re on this page, everything is removed, they can’t receive anything. Now they’re on this page and they say, “Oh, cat food.” They hit submit, now the second automation runs, and all it does is resubscribe.

It adds the cat tag back. So, all of the tags were removed, they came back in, went here, got this tag again, which puts them back in my segment so when I send it to them, they’ll get the messaging. It’s beautiful, because you literally set this up one time, and all of these automations in your segments, they’re all working hand in hand. They’re all working hand in hand. So now, somebody may be saying, “But Chris, if you do it that way, you just removed the way to figure out who’s unsubscribed but had that interest.” You are correct. You are correct, I did remove that, and in fact, one thing that I didn’t mention is we also may wanna clear out that custom field.

We absolutely wanna clear out the custom field, so the message types allows them to no longer receive that email, but we also want them to … we want to remove that custom field, because why? Because it would … I don’t think we need to worry about the custom field. What I was thinking is, if they unsubscribe that custom field, would … no, it wouldn’t. It wouldn’t at all. It would not at all. I’m just thinking out loud everybody, of every possible use case. As it is now, it’s good to go. I’m just thinking how to optimize it really quick, and Clive, I’ll come to you. Thanks for hanging in there.

Because if not, you know what we could do, everybody? You know what you could do? You could do this. Watch this. Just to be safe. I can update that custom field. Please select the type of communication you would like to receive from us, and I could update it to clear. Everything. And if I did that here, let me see. Yeah. Look at that. You know what? I can move this right here. Wow. I didn’t think of that. So, check this out everyone. When they unsubscribe, this action is gonna set the custom field to where nothing is checked.

So, we’ve cleared all of their preferences, so they no longer have anything checked. Well no, I don’t wanna do this here. I’m sorry. I did this in the wrong spot. I wanna do that, because they’re resubscribing here. Sorry for the confusion. But you see my process. Even me, I have to really think through this stuff, and if I would’ve mapped it out beforehand, it would’ve gone a lot smoother, but I’m doing this live. Here it is. Please select. So, since these are unchecked, it’s gonna uncheck them for the contact.

So, I’ve cleared out when they’ve unsubscribed, I cleared out everything, I flushed the system, I did. I flushed the system. So, that’s only if you wanna flush the system. You don’t have to flush the system, because remember, they’re unsubscribed from the master list, so these tags, it really doesn’t matter if they have them or not. So, what I would recommend doing is don’t remove the tags here. Because that’s your data on what they were interested in. Instead, flush out the custom fields which applies to tags to the other automation.

That way, when they resubscribe, they can select which custom field. You know, they could select their type of communication they want going forward. And then it’ll also allow them to pick up where they left off, but do I want them? You know what? I’m going back and forth, everybody. As you see, there’s no one way to do this like perfect for every case, but I hope I’m able to explain enough to, and I’m using the revision … yeah. There we go. I wanna use that one. So, I am. I’m gonna flush out. I wanna flush everything out and let them start from scratch. Yeah. So, anyways, with the combination of those three, those two automations, a custom field, and a segment, it’s four things to set up, but once it’s set up I promise you it runs beautifully.

It’s one of the best things, because you don’t have to really worry anymore. You just have to make sure that you’re not mixing your messaging type because that’s the only thing that could mess the system up. So, all right. I’m gonna start from the top. Well, I’m gonna start from the bottom, Clive. Because you have … oh Matt, thank you for letting me know. Matt says, “It totally makes sense.” Great, great. Because I know that was a lot, and I didn’t wanna overwhelm it, but I feel like you can handle it and you proved that you could.

So, all right Clive, so I’m gonna start with your most recent question, and then I’ll go back to your first question. But we’re gonna answer them all. Okay Clive, glad. I’m glad that you got … that helped you, too. Thank you, two. Thank you so much. All right. Should we always have a master list for everyone? I’m gonna give you a definitive yes. Absolutely. Listen, here’s how I would start. Okay? I would start by creating either a master list, or a list called all contacts. Here’s why, Clive.

It’s easier to import all of your contacts to your master list, okay? It is your fail-safe. At the end of the day, you know, everybody is on that list. All right? Now, depending on the platform, your master list will become the main home for everybody to live on, and as Matt has done, he’s got his master list and he’s just using tags and custom fields to segment. What will happen is you may find a need for another list. So, what’s not uncommon is that people will say, “Hey, I want a customer list. I just need a list to add all my customers to.” That’s fine. You can create a customer list, but just know everybody that exists on your master list, is encompassed of everybody in your database, or you could do what some people do is they have a prospect list or a lead list, and a customer list. Okay?

It really is up to you. Here’s some things to think about, Clive. A lot of times, third parties will integrate with ActiveCampaign at a list level. I hate when they do that, and whenever you know a platform that does that, please reach out and let us know. Whether it’s through ideas, or support. Because they really should be integrating at a tag, or a form level. So, to prevent you from having to create a list, I know Webinar Jam is one of those platforms where you have …

Webinar Jam and Unbounce are two that I know of for a fact, integrate at a list level. Well, if that’s the case, then it’s going to mandate you creating multiple lists. There’s no way around it, right? And I did an Office Hours where I showed how to create worker lists for third-party integrations. Third party integrations, subscribe them to a list, you wait for them to engage, and then you add them to your master list. Okay? And then you’re just mailing people on your master list.

So, the easy way, yes. Master list. If you must use multiple lists, I try to keep it under five. Five lists max is more than enough to get you confused, honestly. Because it does. Lists in ActiveCampaign, the reason why … okay. Clive says he has three unrelated lists for different topics, which is why I asked. In that case Clive, since the messaging for each of those will never cross over, yes. Use three separate lists. Absolutely. That is the asterisk by everything that I just said. Yep. If it’s like, I have pet messaging, then I have messaging on fine wine, then it’s like I have messaging on apparel. And there’s no overlap in those audiences, absolutely use three separate lists.

Clive, you actually just helped me identify a law. I will like to deem this law that if you have messaging that does not overlap, it mandates a separate list. Yes. And Kelly O’Connell, she likes to look at messaging type too. If your messaging types are totally different, then yes, use three different lists. Yep. But if there is some overlap, use a master list, and use segments. I mean, use tags and custom fields, to do that. All right?

So, let me go to your first question, Clive. Look at this, we’ve got eight minutes and I think I will be able to answer everything in depth, too. These were not brush-off answers. Right? It was like, “Hey Matt, yeah, you can do it. Matt, use an automation.” Right? Clive, yeah. Use as many lists as you need. This is ActiveCampaign. Right? Why would you come to Office Hours for a response like that? All right, where are we at? Okay. My public pages for unsubscribes are not correctly linked to the correct list when I click the email link. All right.

So, this is something that you’re probably gonna have to get support on this one Clive, but I’m gonna run through it just so we can do a checks and balances to ensure that everything is set up right. So, for those of you that don’t know, and let’s stick with the master list. Master list, we can go to advanced settings, and this is where you’ll see public pages. See how, Clive, set up my public pages? So, now we can create a public page for unsubscribes, subscription updates, forward to a friend and campaign archive. Clive is talking about unsubscribes. So, this public page, when people unsubscribe to the master list, it’s not displaying correctly.

The public page for unsubscribes are not correctly linked to the correct list when I click the email links, all right? So, here’s what I would recommend doing. For your public page, and I believe you have this. Select redirect to a URL instead. Do you have that setup, where it says redirect to a URL instead, Clive? You have that option set? Because that’s gonna be huge. Okay, yes. Set that. Please set that, and then what I would do is put a … create a URL.

So, now again, best practices, everybody, you should have a URL, your domain dot com, forward slash unsubscribe. Okay? Just like a contact and a home page, these are the required pages for every website. So Clive, do me a favor, Clive Horn Speed dot com, forward slash unsubscribe, right? And what you’re gonna do is now, and here’s what you can do since you have three different lists, you can have unsubscribed dash, you know, message type. So, you have three different lists, I’m just gonna say real estate. Unsubscribe dash real estate. Then you could have one that says unsubscribe dash stock market, and then one that says unsubscribe dash debt freedom, right? Those are actually kind of related. So unsubscribe dash real estate, unsubscribe dash online marketing, unsubscribe dash drinks. Right? So, each list will have its own unsubscribe page on your website. All right? And on this page you could just simply put you have successfully been unsubscribed. If this is a mistake, click here to resubscribe. And maybe clicking there takes them to a form on your website, or you create a form like this for each one. You know, where yours would be a little different, Clive, because you’re not gonna show all of the messaging type because it’s not connected. And it will confuse them. They’ll be like, “Whoa, what website am I on?”

So, you have three different unsubscribe pages, with three different resubscribes, right? That would be better, as I have three domains. Yes, Clive, yes. And then there’s one more thing I wanna make sure you have, Clive. What we would do is this. So, yours would look like this, Clive. Sorry to see you go. And here it is. Let me do this. Let me just do HTML code. And here’s what I’m gonna do. Okay? Just follow me. Stick with me. I’m just gonna do color is red, and font weight is bold. Great. Here we go. If this is a mistake and you wish to continue to receive … valuable information, please submit the form below. Okay? Do something like that. And then I’m going to …

Do this. So, yours would look something like this. You would have three, you would have three, let me do this … okay. I’m gonna delete this, and I have a field that I believe says yes. Communication, customer only communication I think, yes. There we … oh my gosh. Perfect. All right. So, this is what your form would look like, Clive. Sorry to see you go. If this was a mistake and you wish to continue to receive valuable information, please submit the form below. I never like submit the form. Please … submit your information.

Doesn’t matter. You get it thought. Information below, okay? So now, they’ll come here, and we can pre-populate name and email if they’re clicking from an email. And then all they have to do is say yes, I’d like to receive these, and hit submit. And then they’ll be resubscribed and re-added to your list, and yeah, you’ll be just fine. And in fact, you probably don’t even need this. You probably, since they’re three separate lists, you just need this. And you don’t even … I don’t even need this.

All right? So, they can come here, and if they made this by mistake, you can have their email pre-populated in this field, and all they have to do is hit submit and then they’ll be back on. And you’ll have three different forms on each website for that, but remember, this is the key. That’s the key for you. Let me go back from scratch, Clive. Here’s the key. That you go to your list, go to advanced settings, public pages, select unsubscribed, and then select unsubscription completed, confirmation, you’ll wanna hit redirect to a URL instead. And you’re gonna put, for those three lists, each three lists are gonna go to their domain dot com forward slash unsubscribe.

That’s gonna solve your issue. That’s gonna solve your issue immediately, I’m pretty confident. If it does, let me know. Let me know. Absolutely. So, yes, no worries Clive. You are very welcome. You’re very welcome. Thank you. And with that, actually, thank all of you for attending Office Hours for those of you who attended live. Special thanks to Matt and Clive who have been working with me on this one through their questions, but all of you who attended live, and you didn’t ask a question, I’m equally appreciative of you. All of you watching the replay right now, I’m grateful for you as well.

So, thank you all for taking the time to come to Office Hours. Yes, you’re welcome Matt. Clive says I’ll drop in again. Yes, yes please do. A great reminder there, Clive. Thank you for saying that. Everybody, you can attend as many Office Hours as you’d like. You are not limited in any capacity. So, it’s every Tuesday at 9:00 AM, and every Friday at 1:00 PM. Register, come online, we will work through all of your questions, just as we did today. So, thank you all for attending, and watching Office Hours. Until next time, automate responsibly my friends, and I’ll see you on the next Office Hours.