Overview

Subscription categories are a means to provide your customers with the flexibility to choose the kind of communication that they want to receive from your brand. Such a feature helps users opt-in only for those communication categories they are interested in. You can use subscription categories to tailor the communication according to user preferences and understand your audience better. Subscription categories can help you reduce the unsubscription rate, increase customer engagement, and improve your brand's relationship with the customer.

For example, you could have categories such as product updates, newsletters, and announcements. Users interested in product updates can subscribe to them alone instead of unsubscribing from your brand's email communications.

When you add only unsubscribe links at the end of the email, and the user chooses to unsubscribe, they get unsubscribed from receiving all promotional emails from your brand. However, having a preference management page enables you to present options about the various kinds of content they can receive from your brand. The customer can then subscribe to whichever categories they want or unsubscribe from all as per their preference.

Use Case

If you are a travel brand offering bus, hotel, and flight reservations, your preference management page can have the following options for each of these offerings:

• Promotions
• Recommendations
• Deals

The below image illustrates a sample preferences page.

How does a user subscribe to categories?

When a user wishes to unsubscribe from receiving emails from your brand, they click on the unsubscribe link in the email footer. When you don't have a setup to manage subscription preferences, the user has no option but to unsubscribe from all promotional communication from your brand. However, if you have subscription categories set up, you can provide users with options to manage their preferences, and they would land on the subscription preferences page where they can subscribe to relevant and interesting categories.

Terms to Know

Categories

These are the classifications of the communication being sent to customers. They represent the different genres of content put out by the brand. For example, categories for a travel booking website could be promotions, discounts, offers, and so on.

Groups

Groups are a collection of categories. They are useful for presenting the categories more contextually to the user. For example, a travel booking website could offer bookings for buses and flights. The same promotional categories could apply to both. Groups provide a means to club relevant categories under each head and present them to the user.

Note: Categories remain unique, and MoEngage tracks subscriptions at the category level.

Landing Page

The landing page is the URL the user would be redirected to when clicking on Manage preferences in the email footer. This will showcase all the possible categories for the user to select/choose from.

Setup

To set up the MoEngage landing page, navigate to Settings > Channel > Email > Subscription Categories in the Dashboard. Click Configure Subscription Categories to choose the landing page for which you want to configure subscription categories.

When setting up subscription categories for the first time, you can choose the MoEngage landing page or a custom landing page, as shown below.

MoEngage Landing Page

When you choose MoEngage landing page as the option, you will get the following screen where you can add categories and groups and preview the landing page.

If you are employing MoEngage Tracking for Unsubscribes, you'll have the option to use either the default MoEngage Landing Page or a Custom Landing Page to manage your user preferences.

Custom Landing Page

You can use this option to have a customized landing page and completely control the look and feel of your landing page. When you choose the Custom Landing page option, you must add the preference page URL as shown below.

User preferences must be manually ported to MoEngage if you are using the custom landing page. This can be done using the Update Subscription Preferences API. For more information, refer to Update Preferences API and Bulk Update Subscription Preferences API.

Configuring Categories, Groups, and Landing Page

MoEngage Landing Page

Choose MoEngage Landing Page in the Configure Subscription Categories option.

Categories

The Categories section helps you add, edit, disable, and archive categories.

Add Category

To add a category, click on +Add category in the top right corner of the Categories section. 

In the following in the Add a new Category screen enter the following details and click on Add at the bottom right corner to add a category.

Category Name

MoEngage uses the category name to identify a category uniquely. This is used internally for earmarking a category and is not visible to the user on the landing page. We recommend adding the group reference to which the category belongs while creating the category name to avoid confusion when using groups.

For example, there could be categories such as promotions and announcements that apply to multiple groups. Adding group references such as Promotions-Buses, Promotions-Flights, and so on can help you distinguish between the categories. MoEngage uses the category name to track the subscriptions.

Display Name

This is the label attached to a category shown on the landing pages. Display names need not be unique and can be similar across different groups. For example, if we have the promotions category under groups called Flights and Buses, the display names can be Promotions for both categories while the category names would have to be unique (for example, Promotions_Flights, Promotions_Buses, and so on). The Display Name is an aesthetic placeholder.

Description

This field will be shown on the landing page and describes the purpose of the category and information about the type of content to be expected when the customer subscribes to this category.

Groups

This field will be shown on the landing page and help you link the category to available groups. This field is optional, and the category-to-group mapping can be done post-category creation too.

Actions Supported for Every Category

All the categories (enabled and disabled) are shown in the categories section on the left pane. The following actions can be performed by clicking on three vertical dots at the end of each category row.

Groups

The Groups section helps you add, edit, arrange and edit groups.

Add Group

To add a group, click +Add Group in the top right corner of the Groups section. Add the Group Name and click Save to add a new group. This group will now be available in the group dropdown for category-group mapping during category creation. MoEngage uses the group name to identify a group uniquely.

Once a Group is created, you can add categories by adding new categories and linking them to the created group in the Add categories page or by editing an existing category and linking it to the newly created group using the group dropdown. You can also add a category to a group by dragging it from another group or ungrouped in the Arrange section.

Ungrouped categories

This is a default group, and categories not mapped to any group are available here. The ungrouped categories group cannot be deleted.

Actions supported for each Group

You can edit, delete, and arrange groups.

Page Preview

The Page Preview section helps you preview the landing page as your user would, either on mobile or desktop.

The following actions can be performed here:

Preview

You can see the current landing page and preview it in the desired mode by choosing the Desktop or Mobile icons available in the top row.

Open in new tab

This option shows you the preview of the landing page as seen on a browser. This can help review if the font sizes, footers, and so on render well on a webpage.

Customize

The Customize option helps you customize your landing page by adding your brand logo, choosing the fonts, CTA button, landing page subdomain, and adding a footer. The following image illustrates the customize page that pops up on clicking the customize option available in the top row of the Page Preview section.

The following options are available on this page:

Preview Options

You can preview the customized changes using either the Desktop or Mobile preview. Click on the Desktop or Mobile icons available on the top panel to preview the customized landing page.

Personalized Preview

This option lets you see a personalized preview of the landing page with the subscription preferences information of a specific user. You can choose the user by providing one of the following details:

1. ID - This is the ID value present in the user profile. For more information, refer to the Client ID.
2. Email - This is the user's Email ID present in the tracked standard attribute Email (Standard).

Open in new tab

This option lets you preview the customized landing page as it appears on the web.

Custom Landing Page

Choose Custom Landing Page in Configure Subscription Categories option and provide the custom-built Manage Preferences page URL. MoEngage will automatically append this URL to the bottom of the email template.

Categories

The Categories section helps you add, edit, disable, and archive categories.

Add Category

You can add the categories supported in the custom landing page. To add a category, click on +Add category in the top right corner of the Categories section. For the custom landing page option, when adding a category, you can only specify the category name for each category in MoEngage.
The category name is a unique identifier that MoEngage uses for tracking subscriptions. This will act as a reference when you are updating the subscription preferences of a user manually. You cannot edit a category name once created.

Actions supported for each category

URL

You can view the URL configured for the preferences page in the Preference page URL field and edit it by clicking on the Edit option.

Switch between Landing Pages

You can switch between landing pages by clicking the Change icon on the top pane of the subscription categories section. The user preferences will be retained when you switch from one landing page to another.

Switch from MoEngage to a Custom Landing Page

When you switch from the MoEngage landing page to a custom one, you will be asked to enter the URL for the landing page. Only the category names will be retained. The information about the Groups will not be retained.

Switch from Custom to MoEngage Landing Page

When you switch from a custom landing page to the MoEngage one, you must enter additional details, such as display names and descriptions for each category, as shown below.

View User Preferences

You can find the subscription preferences of a user in the User Profile. Navigate to the User Info tab in the User Profile. The Subscription Categories section displays the subscription preferences of the user, as illustrated in the image below.

• The greyed fields in the subscription categories section denote the disabled categories.
• Archived categories will not be listed in the user profile.
• If PII Masking is enabled, the subscription preferences are marked as Private.

Whenever a user updates the subscription preferences on the Landing Page, the Email Subscription Category Updated event is fired, and the user preferences are updated in MoEngage. You can view the details of this event in the Activity info tab, as shown below.

Query Unsubscribed Users

You can use Segmentation to find the list of users that have unsubscribed from a specific category. To do so, navigate to Segmentation and follow these steps:

1. Under Select Audience section, select the Filter users by option.
2. Click the User Property tab and search for Email Unsubscribed Categories from the Select Attribute drop-down.
3. Search for the specific category that you are looking for inside the Select Option drop-down.
4. Click the Show Count button to see the number of users. 

Position of Preference Management Link

You can position the preference management link in the emails being sent to customers as follows:

1. Default Link Position - The manage preferences link is typically placed after the email body, as shown below.
2. Customizing Link Position - To position the link inside the email body, add the following code snippet to the HTML Body:
   HTML

   <a data-msys-managepref="1" href="https://api-0X.moengage.com ">Manage your preferences</a>

   The 'X' in the URL refers to the MoEngage Data Center (DC). MoEngage hosts each customer in a different DC. You can find your DC number (value of X) and replace the value of 'X' in the URL by referring to the DC and API endpoint mapping here.

   
3. Customizing Preference Management Landing Page based on Locales - For locale variations in a campaign, you can direct the user to a customized preferences management landing page in the locale's language by adding the following code snippet to the HTML Body.
   HTML

   <a data-msys-managepref="1" data-custom-url="1" href="https://example.com/<Your Locale Specific Preferences Page>">ADD PREFERENCES LINK TEXT IN YOUR LOCALE</a>

<div style="display: none;">
    <a data-msys-unsubscribe=“1” href="https://api-0X.moengage.com/v1/emailresubscribe">unsubscribe_text</a>
</div>    

Subscription Categories Upload via CSV

Follow the below steps to upload the Subscription Categories via CSV upload for your users.

1. Login to MoEngage Dashboard.
2. Navigate to Segment >User Imports.
3. In the following User imports screen that appears, click Import Users on the right-top corner.
   
4. Enter a name for the import in the Import name field.
5. Select user type as Registered users.
6. Click upload from the computer in the Select file field to upload the CSV file. Make sure to follow the below points while uploading the CSV file. In the CSV file to be uploaded:
   1. One column should be reserved for IDs. These are the customer IDs that you use to identify your customers uniquely. For example, they could be the email IDs of your customers.
   2. Maintain another column for the array of subscription categories from which your customers should be unsubscribed. Follow the below format to pass the unsubscribed categories: ["abc"|"xyz"|"def"]; where abc,xyz, and def are unsubscribed categories.
      
      For example, As a marketer, you need a customer named John with email id: john@gmail.com, to be unsubscribed from unsubscategory1 and unsubscategory2. Then the CSV file to be uploaded should have the following format:
      john@gmail.com, ["unsubscategory1"|"unsubscategory2"], in which the email id should be added in one column and ["unsubscategory1"|"unsubscategory2"] should be in the other column.
      
7. After uploading the file, click Preview file to preview the uploaded file. Click Next.
   
8. In the following screen, all the values will be preloaded under the Required mapping section as per the CSV file. You can also change the values if required.
9. Under Map columns section, map your Identifier column (in this example, the Email ID) to ID and Email Unsubscribed Categories column to the Email Unsubscribe Categories attribute. The categories are preloaded in Array String format.
   
10. You can select Do not create new users option if you want to exclusively modify the profiles of users who are already in your Moengage account.
11. You can enable the Save as a file segment toggle button if you want the users in the uploaded CSV file to be saved as a segment.
12. You can enable the Send import status toggle button and select an email ID to send import status to that ID. Click Next.
    
13. In the following screen, select the Import frequency. Click Schedule import.
    
14. The user imports get listed under the User Imports page with a Successful sync status against it.
15. After successful sync, navigate to User Profiles to verify the same.
    1. To access user profiles:
       1. Navigate to Segment > Create Segment.
       2. In the Create segment screen, search for ID or name on the search bar at the top right corner of the screen.
       3. After searching, the modal loads with the required information. Click on the user profile name, this will take you to the user profile.
    2. In the User Profile,
       1. You can view all the imported categories in the Email Unsubscribed Categories field under the Tracked Standard Attribute section.
       2. You can also view all the imported categories under Subscription Categories. All the categories imported via CSV should display the Subscription Status as False.