Message channels are a way to separate/isolate the unsubscribes and deliverability of different types of messages (e.g., marketing vs. transactional).
Message types exist within message channels and are a way of further segmenting the messages you send within a channel and distinguishing between them for unsubscribe purposes.
Both of these concepts are important to understand if you plan on setting up a Subscription Preference Center.
Message Channels Overview
By default, you have 3 message channels:
- marketing
- transactional
- mobile push marketing.
As an example, if a subscriber unsubscribes from messages sent via your marketing channel, they will continue to receive your transactional channel emails. Likewise, if the deliverability for your marketing messages is reduced due to spam reports, the deliverability of your transactional messages will be unaffected since they are sent via the different transactional message channel.
The transactional message channel is designed for business-critical transactional messages, such as order confirmations or shipping notifications. These are processed separately from your bulk send marketing emails, so even if you have a large blast email campaign underway, you can rest assured that your transactional emails are still being sent. In addition these messages do not contain an unsubscribe block, because they do not carry promotional offers.
Messages sent from the marketing message channels require an unsubscribe block with a prominent unsubscribe link and your company’s physical address, since they are promotional emails that must adhere to the CAN SPAM Act. In addition, Iterable has a built-in rule that prevents templates sent from a marketing message channel to be sent more than once in a two hour time frame.
Message Types Overview
By default, each of your message channels will have one type. But you are able to add additional types (more on this below) in order to allow subscribers to unsubscribe from messages in a more granular manner.
For example, you may want to allow a subscriber to unsubscribe from your weekly newsletter (which goes out via the marketing channel), while still receiving other campaigns (which also go out via the marketing channel).
Message types enable this. To take full advantage of this you will need to set up an Subscription Preference Center.
Adding or Managing Message Channels
To add or manage a message channel, go to Settings–> Channels.
You can add new channels by clicking the ‘Create Channel’ button:
You can easily edit the channel name and type by clicking on them.
When a person clicks the {{unsubscribeUrl}} from a message, he is only unsubscribing from the single channel carrying the message. Therefore if a person unsubscribes from your marketing emails, he can still receive your transactional emails since they are being sent from a different channel.
Adding or Managing Message Types
You can add multiple message types for each message channel. For example, you may have various types of marketing emails such daily, weekly or bi-monthly newsletters.
Add a message type by first selecting your message channel, and then clicking on the ‘Create Message Type’ button:
Edit the name of the message type by clicking on it.
If you use {{unsubscribeMessageTypeUrl}} in your email rather than {{unsubscribeUrl}}, then users will only unsubscribe from that particular message type and not the whole channel. You should only use {{unsubscribeMessageTypeUrl}} if you have a preference center that allows people to manage their subscription settings. Otherwise, subscribers may be confused as to why you continue to email them from other message types after they’ve already unsubscribed.
Also, see here for Message Channels and Types Best Practices.
Setting the Message Type for Templates
Set the message type for each email template in the template editor view with the drop down menu.
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