Opt-in Management

Early Access

This is an Early Access feature. To enable it for your account, contact your CSM or raise a support ticket.

Overview

As a marketer, ensuring proper opt-in management is crucial for building trust with your audience and complying with regulations. Opt-in management describes the practices you employ to obtain and manage user consent for communications, primarily through emails. This includes two essential actions:

Obtain explicit user consent for email communications.
Empower recipients to control what email communications they receive.

Understanding these opt-in practices is essential for effective and compliant email marketing. To help you implement these principles, MoEngage offers the following opt-in methods:

Single Opt-in
Double Opt-in

Single Opt-in

Single Opt-in is an email subscription method where a user subscribes to receive communications immediately after providing their email address, typically during a website signup process. This method assumes that by providing their email address during signup, the user has implicitly consented to receive communications.

By default, MoEngage implements the single opt-in method whenever a user profile is created in your dashboard. MoEngage assumes that the user providing their email ID makes them eligible to receive emails. This method prioritizes ease of sign-up with the assumption of immediate consent.

This method is commonly used in the Southeast Asian Region, including India. In contrast, European regulations often require explicit confirmation for marketing communications, with transactional emails being an exception.

info

Information

Single Opt-in operates on the assumption of consent.
Though straightforward, Single Opt-in can sometimes lead to less engaged subscribers or include email addresses entered by mistake.
The regulations of some regions, aiming for higher engagement quality, highlight the significance of Double Opt-in.

Double Opt-in

Double Opt-in is a subscription method in which users must take an additional step to confirm their subscription after initially providing their email address during signup. Typically, this involves clicking a confirmation link in an email sent to the address provided. Only after this confirmation are users subscribed to receive promotional emails. This method prioritizes subscriber verification and engagement through an extra confirmation step.

Double opt-in helps you in the following ways:

Higher quality email list: Double Opt-in verifies that subscribers are genuinely interested, resulting in a list of more engaged users. This can lead to better open rates, click-through rates, and overall campaign performance.
Reduced spam complaints: By requiring explicit confirmation, Double Opt-in significantly reduces the likelihood of users marking emails as spam. This protects the sender's reputation and improves email deliverability.
Improved deliverability: Email providers view Double Opt-in as a sign of legitimate email practices. This can enhance deliverability rates, ensuring that emails reach the intended recipients' inboxes.
Greater accuracy of email addresses: Double Opt-in helps to ensure that the email addresses collected are valid and correctly entered. This reduces bounce rates caused by typos or fake addresses.
Enhanced sender reputation: Sending emails to engaged subscribers who have confirmed their interest improves the sender's reputation with email providers. A good sender reputation is crucial for email deliverability.

Double Opt-in in MoEngage

Whenever a user profile is created, MoEngage tracks whether the user has provided a double opt-in confirmation using the attribute Email Opt-in Status. This attribute can have the following values:

Optin pending: This value indicates that the user has not yet provided consent to receive email communications. Additionally, user profiles in MoEngage that do not contain the Email Opt-in status attribute will be treated as users with the value Optin pending.
Double opted in: This value indicates that the user has provided their explicit consent to receive email communications.
Opted out: This value indicates that the user has unsubscribed from receiving email communications.

The following scenarios explain how user interactions affect opt-in status:

Scenario 1: For a new user who recently signed up for your website following its adoption of double opt-in

John signed up for your website. Upon signing up:

MoEngage creates a profile for John in your workspace.
MoEngage sets John's opt-in status to Optin pending.
You send a consent-seeking email to John, requesting his preferences.

John can then:

Not respond to consent-seeking email: John's Email Opt-in Status remains Optin pending because he has not provided consent.
Interact with the consent-seeking email: John clicks the confirmation link and selects his subscription category preferences while providing his consent. MoEngage changes John's Email Opt-in Status to Double opted in.
Change his preferences after providing consent: MoEngage updates the preferences accordingly, and the Email Opt-in Status remains as Double opted in.
Unsubscribe from your email: John's Email Opt-in Status changes to Opted out.

Scenario 2: For an existing user who signed up on the website before it adopted double opt-in

David is an existing user of your website. He existed before your website implemented double Opt-in. For such a user:

MoEngage sets David's opt-in status to Optin pending because he has not shared his preferences yet.
You send a consent-seeking email to John, requesting his preferences.
David can receive other promotional emails based on the campaign settings that were made live previously.

David can then:

Not respond to consent-seeking email: David's Email Opt-in Status remains Optin pending because he has not provided consent.
Interact with the consent-seeking email: David clicks the confirmation link and selects his subscription category preferences while providing his consent. MoEngage changes David's Email Opt-in Status to Double opted in.
Change his preferences:
- After providing consent: David changes his preferences after providing his consent. MoEngage updates the subscription category preferences accordingly, and the Email Opt-in Status remains as Double opted in.
- Interact with an older email: David interacts with an older email and changes his preferences. MoEngage updates the subscription category preferences accordingly, and the Email Opt-in Status changes from Optin pending to Double opted in.
Unsubscribe from your email:
- After providing consent: David unsubscribed from your email after providing his consent. David's Email Opt-in Status changes from Double opted in to Opted out.
- Interact with an older email: David interacts with an older email and unsubscribes from your email. MoEngage unsubscribes David, and the Email Opt-in Status changes from Optin pending to Opted out.

info	Information Whenever there is a change in opt-in status through any emails or landing pages, an event named Email Opt-in Status Updated is triggered to track all these actions.

Configure Double Opt-in in MoEngage

You can access the Double Opt-in method from the Subscription Management > Opt-in Management tab of Email settings.

To move to the Double Opt-in Method, make sure you implement the following instructions, based on whether Inform or Landing Page is enabled for your workspace:

If you have a record of your existing users' opt-in status and wish to update it in MoEngage, you can perform a bulk update using one of the following methods:

Trigger the Track User Data API of MoEngage to update the opt-in status. For more information, refer to Track User.
Update the Opt-in status using the user imports capability of MoEngage. Perform the following steps to upload the opt-in via CSV upload for your users:
1. On the left navigation menu in the MoEngage dashboard, click Engage Segment, and then click User Imports.
2. On the User Imports page, click Import users in the upper-right corner.
3. On the New user import (CSV) page, enter a name for the import in the Import name field.
4. Select user type as Registered users.
5. Click upload from the computer in the Select file section to upload the CSV file. Make sure to follow the points below while uploading the CSV file. In the CSV file to be uploaded:
  - One column should be reserved for IDs. These are the customer IDs that you use to uniquely identify your users. For example, they could be your users' email IDs.
  - Maintain another column for the user's opt-in status that needs to be updated. The values of the Opt-in status can be Optin pending, Double opted in, or Opted out, and they are case in-sensitive.
6. After uploading the file, click Preview file to preview the uploaded file. Click Next.
7. Under Map columns, map your Identifier column (in this example, the Email ID) to ID and Opt-in status column to the Email Opt-in Status attribute. The categories are preloaded in a String format.
8. Select the Do not create new users option if you want to exclusively modify the profiles of users who are already in your MoEngage account.
9. Turn the Save as a file segment toggle on if you want the users in the uploaded CSV file to be saved as a segment.
10. Turn the Send import status toggle on and select an email ID to send the import status to that ID. Click Next.
11. On the following screen, select the Import frequency. Click Schedule Import.
12. After the sync is successful, navigate to User Profiles to verify the same. Perform the following steps to access user profiles:
  1. Navigate to Segment > Create Segment.
  2. On the Create segment page, search for ID or name in the search bar in the upper-right corner.
  3. After searching, the modal loads with the required information. Clicking the user profile name takes you to the user profile.
  4. In the User Profile, you can view the Email Opt-in Status in the Email Suppression Type.

If you are using the double opt-in mechanism for the first time, perform the following steps to update the opt-in status of users:

Create a Landing Page: This page helps capture the user's consent.
- Landing page is enabled for your account: Create a landing page in the MoEngage dashboard. For more information, refer to Create a Landing Page.
- Landing page is not enabled for your account: Create your own landing page to collect the double opt-in preference of the user. Trigger the Email Opt-in Management API of MoEngage to pass this information back to MoEngage.
Create a Periodic Flow campaign: This helps send follow-up emails asking the users for explicit permission. While creating the periodic flow campaign, define the following:
1. In step 2, When will users enter the flow, define the flow entry condition.
  1. Under User enter the flow, click At fixed time.
  2. Under Periodic, click Daily.
2. In step 3, Who will enter the flow, define the target audience.
  1. Under Audience, click the Filter users by option and then click the User property tab.
  2. Select the Email Opt-in Status attribute as not equal to Double opted in.
  3. Click + Nested Filter and select OR.
  4. Select the Email Opt-in Status attribute as not equal to Opted out.
  5. Click + Filter and click AND.
  6. Click the User property tab.
  7. Select First Seen as before the day you configured Double opt-in (in the image below, consider the double opt-in is configured on April 12, 2025). For more information, refer to Create a Flow.
3. Define the series of communication at a frequency of your choice.

arrow_drop_down Inform and Landing Page are enabled

Perform the following steps to update the opt-in status of new users:

Create a Landing Page: This page helps capture the user's consent. Create a landing page in the MoEngage dashboard. For more information, refer to Create a Landing Page.
Create an email alert: This alert helps deliver the consent-seeking email when the user signs up. Make sure to follow the points below while creating an email alert:
- Define the email alert content for your consent-seeking email.
- Add the link to the landing page created above as the primary CTA in your alert content.

Create a Connector campaign: This helps update the opt-in status of users submitting preferences on the created landing page by making an API call to the Email Optin Management API of MoEngage. Perform the following steps to create a connector campaign:

Select the delivery type as Event Triggered.
In step 1, Target users, define the Trigger criteria as users who have executed the Response Submitted event with the attribute Landing Page Id.
Under Select audience, click All users.
In step 2, Content, select Method as PUT and add Webhook URL as
https://api-{{0X}}.moengage.com/v1/opt-in-management/user-preferencesThe 'X' in the API Endpoint URL refers to the MoEngage Data Center (DC). MoEngage maintains different data centres for different clients. 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.
Provide Headers as:
1. Content-Type: {"Content-Type": "application/json"}
2. Authorization: {"Authorization": "Basic Base64_ENCODED_APPKEY_APIKEY"}
3. MOE-APPKEY: {“MOE-APPKEY”: “Workspace ID”}
  For more information, refer to Email Optin Management API.

Select the Body type as Raw and add the following Jinja code:

{
  "user_preferences": {
    "customer_id": "{{UserAttribute['ID']}}",
    "email_id": "{{UserAttribute['Email (Standard)']}}",
    "categories": {% set data = {} %}{% for i in <EVENT ATTRIBUTE>  %} {% set _ = data.update({i|replace(" ","_"):true}) %}{% endfor %}{{data|replace("'",'"')|replace("True","true")}},
    "opt_in_status": "DOUBLE_OPTED_IN",
    "channel": "email"
  }
}

info

Information

The Jinja above assumes that you track Double opt-in at the Subcategory level and that the Category Name is the same as the Category Display Name with "_" instead of spaces.
Make sure to replace <EVENT ATTRIBUTE> with the event attribute of the Response Submitted event that contains the user's selected categories.

Publish the connector campaign.

Create a Periodic Flow campaign: This helps send follow-up emails asking the users for explicit permission. While creating the periodic flow campaign, make sure to define the following:
1. In step 2, When will users enter the flow, define the flow entry criteria.
2. Under User enter the flow, click At fixed time.
3. Under Periodic, click Daily.
4. In step 3, Who will enter the flow, define the audience.
5. Under Audience, click the Filter users by option and then click the User behavior tab.
6. Select users who have executed the Signup Activity event (your sign-up event) at least once in the last 30 Days.
7. Click + Filter and click AND.
8. Click the User property tab and select the Email Opt-in Status attribute as not equal to Double opted in.
9. Click + Nested Filter and select OR.
10. Click the User property tab and select the Email Opt-in Status attribute as not equal to Opted out. For more information, refer to Create a Flow.
11. Add a wait stage to have a suitable gap between the first email alert and the reminders.
12. The series of communication at a frequency of your choice.

arrow_drop_down Inform is enabled, and Landing Page is not enabled

Perform the following steps to update the opt-in status of new users:

Create a Landing Page: This page helps capture the user's consent. Create your own landing page to collect the user's double opt-in preference. Trigger the Email Opt-in Management API of MoEngage to pass this information back to MoEngage.
Create an email alert: This alert helps deliver the consent-seeking email when the user signs up. Make sure to follow the points below while creating an email alert:
- Define the alert content of your consent-seeking email.
- Add the link to the landing page created above as the primary CTA in your alert content.
Create a Periodic Flow campaign: This helps send follow-up emails asking the users for explicit permission. While creating the periodic flow campaign, make sure to define the following:
1. In step 2, When will users enter the flow, define the flow entry condition.
2. Under User enter the flow, click At fixed time.
3. Under Periodic, click Daily.
4. In step 3, Who will enter the flow, define the target audience.
5. Under Audience, click the Filter users by option and then click the User behavior tab.
6. Select users who have executed the Signup Activity event (your sign-up event) at least once in the last 30 Days.
7. Click + Filter and click AND.
8. Click the User property tab and select the Email Opt-in Status attribute as not equal to Double opted in.
9. Click + Nested Filter and select OR.
10. Click the User property tab and select the Email Opt-in Status attribute as not equal to Opted out. For more information, refer to Create a Flow.
11. Add a wait stage to have a suitable gap between the first email alert and the reminders.
12. The series of communication at a frequency of your choice.

arrow_drop_down Inform is not enabled, and Landing Page is enabled

Perform the following steps to update the opt-in status of new users:

Create a Landing Page: This page helps capture the user's consent. Create a landing page in the MoEngage dashboard. For more information, refer to Create a Landing Page.
Create an Event Triggered email: This campaign helps deliver the consent-seeking email when the user signs up. Make sure to follow the points below while creating an event-triggered email:
- Define the content type of your event-triggered email to be Transactional.
- Define your campaign content for your consent-seeking email.
- Add the link to the landing page created above to the primary CTA in your email's content.

Create a Connector campaign: This helps update the opt-in status of users submitting preferences in the created landing page by making an API call to the Email Optin Management API of MoEngage. Make sure to follow the points below while creating a connector campaign:

Select the delivery type as Event Triggered.
In step 1, Target users, define the Trigger criteria as users who have executed the Response Submitted event with the attribute Landing Page Id.
Under Select audience, click All users.
In step 2, Content, select Method as PUT and add Webhook URL as
https://api-{{0X}}.moengage.com/v1/opt-in-management/user-preferencesThe 'X' in the API Endpoint URL refers to the MoEngage Data Center (DC). MoEngage maintains different data centres for different clients. 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.
Provide Headers as:
1. Content-Type: {"Content-Type": "application/json"}
2. Authorization: {"Authorization": "Basic Base64_ENCODED_APPKEY_APIKEY"}
3. MOE-APPKEY: {“MOE-APPKEY”: “Workspace ID”}
  For more information, refer to Email Optin Management API.

Select the Body type as Raw and add the following Jinja code:

{
  "user_preferences": {
    "customer_id": "{{UserAttribute['ID']}}",
    "email_id": "{{UserAttribute['Email (Standard)']}}",
    "categories": {% set data = {} %}{% for i in   %} {% set _ = data.update({i|replace(" ","_"):true}) %}{% endfor %}{{data|replace("'",'"')|replace("True","true")}},
    "opt_in_status": "DOUBLE_OPTED_IN",
    "channel": "email"
  }
}

info

Information

The above Jinja assumes that you track Double opt-in at the Subcategory level and that the Category Name is the same as the Category Display Name with "_" instead of spaces.
Make sure to replace <EVENT ATTRIBUTE> with the event attribute of the Response Submitted event that contains the user's selected categories.

Publish the connector campaign.

Create a Periodic Flow campaign: This helps send follow-up emails asking the users for explicit permission. While creating the periodic flow campaign, make sure to define the following:
1. In step 2, When will users enter the flow, define the flow entry condition.
2. Under User enter the flow, click At fixed time.
3. Under Periodic, click Daily.
4. In step 3, Who will enter the flow, define the target audience.
5. Under Audience, click the Filter users by option and then click the User behavior tab.
6. Select users who have executed the Signup Activity event (your sign-up event) at least once in the last 30 Days.
7. Click + Filter and click AND.
8. Click the User property tab and select the Email Opt-in Status attribute as not equal to Double opted in.
9. Click + Nested Filter and select OR.
10. Click the User property tab and select the Email Opt-in Status attribute as not equal to Opted out. For more information, refer to Create a Flow.
11. Add a wait stage to have a suitable gap between the first email alert and the reminders.
12. The series of communication at a frequency of your choice.

arrow_drop_down Inform and Landing Page are not enabled

Perform the following steps to update the opt-in status of new users:

Create a Landing Page: This page helps capture the user's consent. Create your own landing page to collect the user's double opt-in preference. Trigger the Email Opt-in Management API of MoEngage to pass this information back to MoEngage.
Create an Event Triggered email: This campaign helps deliver the consent-seeking email when the user signs up. Make sure to follow the points below while creating an event-triggered email:
- Define the content type of your event-triggered email to be Transactional.
- Define the campaign content for your consent-seeking email.
- Add the link to the landing page created above to the Primary CTA in your email's content.
Create a Periodic Flow campaign: This helps send follow-up emails asking the users for explicit permission. While creating the periodic flow campaign, make sure to define the following:
1. In step 2, When will users enter the flow, define the flow entry condition.
2. Under User enter the flow, click At fixed time.
3. Under Periodic, click Daily.
4. In step 3, Who will enter the flow, define the target audience.
5. Under Audience, click the Filter users by option and then click the User behavior tab.
6. Select users who have executed the Signup Activity event (your sign-up event) at least once in the last 30 Days.
7. Click + Filter and click AND.
8. Click the User property tab and select the Email Opt-in Status attribute as not equal to Double opted in.
9. Click + Nested Filter and select OR.
10. Click the User property tab and select the Email Opt-in Status attribute as not equal to Opted out. For more information, refer to Create a Flow.
11. Add a wait stage to have a suitable gap between the first email alert and the reminders.
12. The series of communication at a frequency of your choice.

Balance Engagement and Reachability Using Double Opt-in

While the Double Opt-in method allows you to engage primarily with subscribers who have demonstrated a high level of interest, it's important to acknowledge that this approach can significantly reduce the overall number of subscribers on your list. This trade-off between subscriber quality and quantity is a key consideration for you.

For brands with a presence across different geographical regions, the decision to implement Double Opt-in can be strategically applied at a regional level. This flexibility recognizes that email marketing best practices and legal requirements regarding consent can vary substantially from one part of the world to another.

The Double Opt-in option of MoEngage allows you to enable or disable the Send only to double-opted-in users toggle based on these regional considerations while creating the email campaign. This allows for a tailored approach to email list management. For more information, refer here.

FAQs

arrow_drop_down How do existing active email campaigns get affected when I change the opt-in settings?

If the workspace moves to Double opt-in method, all the existing active campaigns will continue to send to reachable users part of the target audience without considering the Email Opt-in Status user attribute's value. While any new promotional email campaign created would consider the Email Opt-in Status user attribute's value by default. The same can be changed at a campaign level at the creator's discretion.
If the workspace moves to Singe Opt-in method from Double Opt-in method, all the active promotional email campaigns would start ignoring the Email Opt-in Status user attribute's value to decide the reachability status of the user.

arrow_drop_down What happens when there is more than one profile with the same email ID? Does the Opt-in status carry forward to all such profiles?

By default, yes, they are carried forward. If user A and B have the same email ID and received consent from A, both A and B are marked as double opted in. However, you can always control this. To do so, please contact the MoEngage Team.

arrow_drop_down What happens to the opt-in status value in case of "User merge"?

User merge is a process of MoEngage merging the anonymous profile with the identified profile. So at any point in time the merged profile's value is retained.

arrow_drop_down How can I identify users whose opt-in status has been updated?

Anytime the user's opt-in status gets updated using the Email Opt-in Management API, Resubscribe API, Update Subscription Preference API or via the end-users' interaction, MoEngage raises an event called Email Optin Status Updated with the necessary information.

arrow_drop_down If I track email IDs across multiple user attributes, how will MoEngage identify the users to update the opt-in value when we pass the same through the Email Opt-in Management API?

The user attribute mentioned in the General Settings of email will be used to search for the user with the provided email as the value in the API. If the API is provided with the customer ID, MoEngage uses that to find the user.

arrow_drop_down How can I segment users whose opt-in status has been updated if needed?

Anytime the users' opt-in status gets updated using the Email Opt-in Management API, Resubscribe API, Update Subscription Preference API, or via the end-users' interaction, MoEngage raises an event called Email Optin Status Updated with the necessary information.
Note: The retention of this event would be the same as any other event tracked in MoEngage. If you want to store this for a longer period, use Streams or other export options provided by MoEngage to store it on your side. Click here to know more.

arrow_drop_down How do I update the opt-in status with PII encryption or tokenization?

If you use PII Tokenization for your emails, ensure you pass the user ID when calling the Email Opt-in Management API. MoEngage uses this user ID to locate the user and update their opt-in status. Passing the email ID is ineffective in this case, as MoEngage does not store it.
If you use PII Encryption to send emails, ensure you pass either the user ID or the decrypted email ID. MoEngage uses this information to locate the associated user and update their opt-in status, or to update the opt-in status of all users having that email ID.