Unsubscribing from emails

Your Wild Apricot site can send out different types of emails, including:

• automated event announcements
• manual emails
• forum subscriptions
• automatic system emails

Contacts can unsubscribe separately for each type of email – except for automatic system emails. Once they unsubscribe, they will no longer receive that type of email, but will continue to receive other types of emails. For example, a contact can choose to not receive event announcements and still receive all other emails from your organization.

Contacts cannot unsubscribe from receiving automatic system emails such as membership renewal reminders, event registration confirmations, invoices, or payment receipts. Administrators can prevent contacts from receiving these types of emails only by disabling the delivery of all emails to the contact.

Contacts can unsubscribe from different types of email within their profiles, or by clicking the Unsubscribe link in an email. Administrators can unsubscribe contacts from their contact records. These methods can also be used to subscribe contacts – to sign them up to receive certain types of emails.

Unsubscribing will prevent the delivery of messages to both primary and second email addresses.

Administrators can track the number of contacts who click the Unsubscribe link in manual emails, and search for contacts according to their email preferences – whether they are currently subscribed to receive each type of email.

Adding an Unsubscribe link

You can add the {Unsubscribe_Url} macro to any message yourself. Instead of simply adding the macro, you might want to enter descriptive text – e.g. "Click here to unsubscribe" – then link that text to the {Unsubscribe_Url} macro.

Certain type of emails sent from your site will always include an Unsubscribe link in the email. An unsubscribe link will be automatically added to the following emails if they do not already include the {Unsubscribe_Url} macro:

• manual emails
• event announcements
• forum subscriptions

When opening these emails, the recipient should see the unsubscribe link at the bottom of the email:

Using the Unsubscribe link

Clicking the unsubscribe link will redirect the contact to a page on your site where they can unsubscribe:

You can customize this page by modifying the Unsubscribe from emails system page.

The Unsubscribe link will only unsubscribe the contact from one specific type of email, not from all types of email. For example, if a contact unsubscribes from a manual email (like a newsletter) then the contact will stop receiving all manual emails, but will continue to receive event announcements. To unsubscribe from both types of emails, contacts need to unsubscribe from each email type separately, or login and edit their email subscription settings.

Guest attendees receiving an email reminder for event registrants will be unable to use the Unsubscribe link to unsubscribe from future emails since they have not been added to your contact database.

Administrators are not informed when someone unsubscribes. However, if you've enabled email tracking for a manual email, you can see – within the email log – the recipients who clicked the Unsubscribe link.

Unsubscribed contacts are automatically removed from the recipient list when sending manuals emails.

Updating email preferences

A contact can update their opt-in status, and unsubscribe from – or subscribe to – different types of email from their profile. To update email preferences, the contact follows these steps:

1. Logs into their Wild Apricot site.
2. Clicks the View profile link to jump to their member profile page. Depending on the website theme, their name may appear as the link.
   
3. Clicks the Email subscriptions link.
4. Clicks the Edit profile button.
5. If the opt-in mechanism has been enabled for your site, contacts can update their opt-in status.
6. Whether the opt-in mechanism is enabled or not, contacts can choose the specific types of message they want to receive. They can separately choose whether they wish to receive:
   
   Event announcements
   Automatic event emails sent to people not yet registered for the event
   
   Manual email blasts
   All emails sent manually by administrators
   
7. In addition, contacts can control their forum subscriptions, if they have already subscribed to forum updates. Contacts can turn off forum updates and control how frequently they receive forum update notifications.

By default, every new contact will have event notifications and manual email turned on.

The email settings above do not affect other automatic emails such as membership renewal reminders and invoices/receipts. Only administrators can disable those emails (see below).

Changing a contact's email settings

An administrator can change a contact's email preferences from their contact record. The administrator can change which types of email the contact is subscribed to, and change the frequency of forum update notifications. The administrator can also disable the delivery of all emails, including automatic system emails, to the contact.

To change a contact's email preferences, follow these steps:

1. Find the contact in the contact database and display the contact's details.
2. Click the Email settings and log link.
3. Click the Edit button beside Email preferences.
4. Check the type of emails you want the contact to receive. To disable all emails – including automatic system emails such as membership renewal reminders, event registration confirmations, invoices, and payment receipts – click the Disable ALL emails option. For forum subscriptions – which only appear if the contact has subscribed to a forum or forum topic from a forum page – you can also change the frequency of the forum update notifications.
5. When you are finished, click Save.

Searching for unsubscribed members or contacts

To search for members or contacts who have unsubscribed from different types of mailings, follow these steps:

1. Go to the Advanced search tab for contacts or members.
2. Select Email preferences as your search criteria.
3. Click the All of selecteddropdown and choose None of the selected.
4. CheckSend event announcements to search for those who have unsubscribed from event announcements, and/or check Subscribed to emailings to search for those who have unsubscribed from manual emails.
5. Click Search to perform the search, or enter a name for the search and click Save to save and perform the search.