Use Publications for Unsubscriptions
*EA feature in testing*:
If you use Gmail or Yahoo to send over 5,000 emails in a 24-hour period, your marketing and promotional bulk emails must be compliant with their one-click unsubscribe requirement. SendGrid offers unsubscribe through subscription tracking, but this is an all-or-nothing feature, meaning an individual will unsubscribe from all communication if they unsubscribe from one email.
Instead, you can use Publications to send different types of emails. That way, if someone doesn't want to receive that type of email, they can unsubscribe from only that specific Publication when they use the SendGrid Unsubscribe link.
- The Message recipients receive includes the Publication ID.
- SendGrid looks for the relevant Group based on that Publication ID.
- If there is no group with the Publication ID, it creates a new Group.
- If there are already 200 Groups (the SendGrid maximum), your email will send but it won't associate to the Publication. Then, if you enable subscription tracking, the recipient can use the Unsubscribe link, but it affects all Messages you send (since it isn't associated with a Publication). If you don't enable subscription tracking, the recipient can't unsubscribe and your email isn't compliant.
- The Group ID is included in the email header.
- If a recipient clicks the Unsubscribe link in the email header, the Group ID sends to MinistryPlatform.
- The Platform locates the Contact ID and Publication ID and updates the Unsubscribe field for that Contact, for that Publication.
Best Practices & Examples
There are many different ways churches can communicate with their congregations. Still, we can provide some guidelines to help you communicate in a way that better meets your expectations.
- Start small. Set up a few Publications that cover most of your communications. For example, you might have one Publication for Church Announcements and one for Small Group Communications.
- Use widgets. While the List-Unsubscribe header link allows people to unsubscribe, the One-Click Unsubscribe widget and the My Subscriptions widget give your congregants more ways to control what they receive. Including these widgets in your email will NOT meet the Gmail or Yahoo requirements, but it will make things easier and better for you and your email recipients.
- Only send a Message to one Publication at a time. That way, a recipient's unsubscription request updates the correct Publication in MinistryPlatform.
Publication Unsubscriptions FAQ
Anyone who sends large numbers of emails using Gmail or Yahoo. The first time you send over 5,000 emails in a 24-hour period, you'll need to comply with these standards. Note that transactional emails, like password reset and task notifications, are excluded from these requirements.
Yes. When you enable the SendGrid subscription tracking, the List-Unsubscribe header is automatically included in your messages. However, if you are not using publications and someone clicks the Unsubscribe link, they will be unsubscribed from all emails that you send from MinistryPlatform.
Gmail's email sender guidelines say that message recipients, not Google, determine the nature of the messages they receive.
Since we're all about "your church, your way", it's hard to share a one-size-fits-all recommendation. But using publications for bulk emails is a good way to help your recipients manage which emails they receive from you. Check out our best practices for guidance, and engage the MinistryPlatform Community to see what's working for others.
The email recipient's experience will be similar when they use the One-Click Unsubscribe widget or the Unsubscribe link in the email header. Both ways let the user know that they have been unsubscribed from the publication, and both ways update the Platform.
Users must log in to manage their subscriptions in the My Subscriptions widget. All publications where the Available Online field is set to Yes will be visible in the widget. If you choose to use publications to add the List-Unsubscribe header to bulk emails, and you don't want users to be able to opt-in to this on their own, be sure to set the Available Online field to No.
SendGrid limits unsubscription tracking to 200 publications. We are working with SendGrid to explore options for those who need to use over 200 publications.
You'll need to update the SendGrid Global Unsubscription list so that the recipient can receive emails again. Simply updating their Bulk Email Opt Out field or adding subscriptions back will not update SendGrid's information for that recipient.
In SendGrid, under the Activity Feed, you can use Advanced Search to find recent Group Unsubscribes in a certain date range or by group name. Your search may look like this, for example:
Then, you can compare that information with the records in the Unsubscribed view on the All Subscriptions page in MinistryPlatform.