Message Channels and Types Best Practices

Message channels and message types allow you to provide a granular subscription model for your audience. This enables your users to decide what content to receive in their inbox, increasing their joy for your brand and reducing spam complaints in the process.

Setting up your message channels and types and managing subscriptions are essential tasks for this model to be effective.

Follow these best practices and tips to make sure you properly handle channel and message type unsubscribes.

# In this article

# Create two message channels: transactional and marketing

In most cases, you should only have two message channels per message medium: transactional and marketing.

A transactional channel is designed for messages like purchase confirmations, registrations, and password resets. Users can't typically unsubscribe from these messages.

A marketing channel is designed for all marketing sends, including newsletters, promotions, and cart abandonment campaigns.

# Create message types

Consider creating additional message types, especially in marketing channels.

This gives subscribers the option to opt in or out of different types of marketing messages, rather than all marketing messages (the difference between "Click here to unsubscribe from all future marketing emails" and "Click here to unsubscribe from all future newsletter emails").

# Add a message type to each template

In the template editor, select the message type you'd like to associate with the message.

The message type determines who receives the message, since users only receive messages associated with opt-in message types to which they have subscribed or opt-out message types to which they have not unsubscribed.

# Include email unsubscribe links

Emails sent from the marketing channel require an unsubscribe method.

The following merge parameters provide users with various ways to unsubscribe:

# Use the Iterable UI to view and update a user's subscriptions

To view and/or update a user's channel subscriptions using Iterable's web interface:

1. Go to Audience > Contact Lookup.
2. Enter a user's email address or user ID (the search box reflects the necessary field) and click Search Users.
3. Go to the Subscriptions menu to view and edit the user's channel and message type subscriptions:

# Unsubscribe or subscribe a list of users

To upload a list and subscribe or unsubscribe all users:

1. Go to Audience > Lists.
2. Click Channel Unsubscribe Users or Channel Subscribe Users.
3. Select the channel(s) to subscribe to, or unsubscribe from.
4. Add a CSV file and click Upload Subscribers or Remove Subscribers.

# Other ways to modify subscriptions

Understand other ways a user's message channel or type subscription can be modified:

• Modifying message channel subscriptions

  Various actions can unsubscribe a user from a message channel:

  • A user from your organization unsubscribes the user by uploading a CSV.
  • A user from your organization clicks the channel toggle in the user profile.
  • An end user clicks the {{unsubscribeUrl}} in the actual email.
  • An API call (such as POST /api/users/updateSubscriptions) is made.
  • A subscriber hard bounces or submits a complaint upon receiving an email.

  When a person unsubscribes from a channel, they no longer receive any message from any message type in that channel, regardless of their specific message type subscriptions.

• Modifying message type subscriptions

  Various actions can unsubscribe a user from a message type:

  • An end user clicks the {{unsubscribeMessageTypeUrl}} in the actual email.
  • An API call (such as POST /api/users/updateSubscriptions) is made.

  When a person unsubscribes from a message type, they no longer receive messages from that message type. However, they still receive emails from the other message types to which they have subscribed (for opt-in message types) or not unsubscribed (for opt-out message types).

# Unsubscribe Sources

To learn how a user was unsubscribed, read Unsubscribe Sources.