About Communication Preferences in Campaigns

See Also

Communication preferences are a framework in which contacts define the media through which your institution communicates with them as they progress to become targets in campaigns. These media are collectively referred to as a contact’s communication preferences.

Before your institution can record a contact’s communication preferences, the administrator is required to do the following:

•   Create categories and groups

Categories are parent classifications that include multiple groups. As part of a contact’s preference settings, your university or organization will be required to create categories and groups against which a contact can select communication preferences.

The following table illustrates the concept of categories and groups. See the example after the table for more details.

Category	Group	Communication Preferences
		Email	Letter	SMS
Track Events	Individual sprints
	Relay sprints
	Middle distance sprints
	Long distance events
Field Events	Throwing events
	Jumping events
	Multi-discipline events

Example

The sports department at McCaul University plans to conduct trails to finalize the track team for the inter-university track and field championships that are scheduled for next summer. To finalize the team, events are broken down, or “categorized”, as indicated in the Category column, and these categories are broken down, or “grouped”, further into groups as indicated in the Group column. For the selection trails, the sports department at McCaul sends email to students to collect information about their preferred media of notification. The available media are email, letter, and SMS. Students update and return the form after selecting the values Yes or No in each field.

The example illustrates that categories are a super set classification that comprise groups. Groups are a fundamental unit of classification based on which an organization can collect information regarding a contact’s communication preferences. While multiple groups typically form a category, a category can also have only one group.

•   Enable campaign support (includes support for preferences) for the object that will progress through campaigns

For more information about these tasks, your administrator must see Business Administrator Help.

Communication preferences can be added or edited in the Preferences tab of a contact record in Web Client. Updates to the tab can also occur through an import operation, postal mail, telephone calls, or when the contact updates information on an institutional portal, and so on.

IMPORTANT

Information in the Preferences tab is displayed in read-only mode in Desktop Client.

Communication preferences are applicable to the following campaign actions:

•   Send mailer

•   Send SMS

•   Create Letter

•   Create Label – a contact’s communication preferences for the letter medium implicitly applies to the label medium.

The following non-wait events can be included after the action to segregate the targets based on whether preferences matched or did not match:

Campaign Action	Non-wait events
Send mailer	•   Send mailer - Preferences Matched •   Send mailer - Preferences Mismatched
Send SMS	•   Send SMS - Preferences Matched •   Send SMS - Preferences Mismatched
Create Letter	•   Create Letter - Preferences Matched •   Create Letter - Preferences Mismatched
Create Label	•   Create Label - Preferences Matched •   Create Label - Preferences Mismatched

If the non-wait events indicated in the above table are not included after the associated action, the targets will progress to the step that follows the action.

Additionally, ensure that you include the following non-wait events immediately after the associated actions if other non-wait events are also included immediately after the action:

Campaign Action	Non-wait events
Send mailer	Send mailer - Preferences Mismatched
Send SMS	Send SMS - Preferences Mismatched

Adding the non-wait event indicated in the above table enables you to track targets who do not progress through other non-wait events.

Note

For information about setting communication preferences, see the description for selecting preferences in campaign actions.

For information about non-wait events, see Inserting Event Nodes.