You likely send your customers a few different types of emails: newsletters, feature announcements, urgent notifications etc. Granular Subscriptions let customers easily opt out of non-essential communications without missing what’s important to them.

So you can respect their inbox, but still reach them when it really counts.

You can create as many Subscriptions as you need. For example:

If your customers unsubscribe from an email, they’ll see all of these Subscriptions, and can easily choose the ones that are most interesting to them, so they don’t miss out on what’s important.

Go to Proactive Support > Settings > Subscriptions, and you’ll see your current Subscriptions. You can edit these and put them live, archive them or leave them as drafts:

Note: It’s not possible to permanently delete a Subscription.

To create a new Subscription, click “New Subscription”:

Then select Email or SMS depending on the type of outbound message you'll send with this Subscription:

Note: SMS is only available when you use Intercom's true 2-way SMS.

Find out how to manage SMS consent with Subscriptions here.

Now give your Subscription a name and description which tells customers what they've opted in to and what kinds of messages they can expect. For example, you could create a "Marketing" Subscription for latest news and offers.

Important: Once the Subscription is live, this is visible to customers, so make sure it’s clear and accurate. 👌

Choose a "Consent Type" for your Subscription based on whether customer consent is required or implied. It's best practice to choose "Opt-In" and allow customers to opt themselves in to any Subscriptions.

However, you can automatically opt customers in to this Subscription if you already have their consent and need to send them operational or critical updates. By choosing "Opt-Out" customers will need to take action to stop receiving these messages.

Important: For all marketing and promotional communication, not choosing opt-in will result in compliance breach and potential fines.

Then click "Save and close" to add this as a new Subscription.

You'll need to select "Put Live" to start sending outbound messages with this Subscription and for customers to be able to opt-in/out.

If you support additional languages in your workspace, you can add them under “Localize your Subscriptions”:

Then, add a translated name and description for each Subscription. This will be displayed based on a customer’s browser language when they visit your unsubscribe page:

Note:

Pro tip: You can preview your unsubscribe page by using the preview function and selecting "Email":

This preview also provides a direct link you can share with your customers to allow them to edit their preferences.

Note: This doesn’t make any changes to your existing email messages. Read on to learn how to apply Subscriptions to your messages.👇

With at least one live Subscription, they can be assigned to new and existing email messages. When composing a message, select the Subscription here:

Important: For a good customer experience, the name and description of each Subscription should accurately represent the messages associated with it.

If a message doesn’t fit one of your Subscriptions, it’s best to create a new one. This ensures your customers don’t unsubscribe for the wrong reasons, and maintains good deliverability overall.

Now if a customer clicks your unsubscribe link, they’ll be automatically removed from this Subscription, and see a page where they can opt back in or manage the rest of their Subscriptions:

Important: If you don’t choose a Subscription for a message, when a customer unsubscribes from it, they will be unsubscribed from all lists. The same behavior applies if they unsubscribe with a link automatically provided by their email client.

While messaging customers via the Help Desk or via bots in the Messenger, you can insert the Subscription Type Opt-In Form app to quickly collect messaging consent and build up your subscribers.

When creating a new outbound message, simply insert the app into the content composer. For example, we can add the app to a chat:

Now select the Subscription Type you’d like them to opt into. You’ll be shown a list of all your active Subscriptions. If an email subscription type is selected, the customer will be asked to provide an email address.

Note: If the customer already has a valid email address, it will be shown as a ‘saved’ email address which they can opt-in. They won’t be able to edit this address in the form.

The form title should explain what you’re asking the customer to do and can be customized to suit your specific use case. For example, “Sign up to our newsletter for 10% off”.

Personalize the opt-in form experience with a custom call-to-action button. If this field is left empty, the app will default to “Sign Up Now”.

You can also provide any legal information or other text along with the opt-in form. This is ideal for marketing email opt-ins where it’s best practice to provide links to a privacy policy or explain the frequency at which a customer will receive marketing emails.

Once the fields are completed, click “Insert Form” and the app will be ready to be delivered as part of the message.

To edit the name or description and make it more relevant to the types of email messages you send, or archive a Subscription you no longer use, simply hover over it and click the edit or archive button:

To see all your contacts who have unsubscribed from a particular type, you can filter for “Subscription opt-outs”. This example shows all customer who have opted out of “Announcements”:

You can also see an individual’s Subscription preferences and any email issues they’ve had (like bounces) from their profile:

You can edit these preferences manually, in compliance with applicable data, privacy, and email marketing laws.

You can also bulk opt-in or opt-out users from Contacts > All users.

Select the checkbox next to each contact then use the More dropdown to select Unsubscribe users or Subscribe users.

Then choose the list you want to subscribe/unsubscribe them from.

We support webhooks for opt-in and opt-out. You can listen to the granular.subscribe or granular.unsubscribe topic. This is available on the unstable API version and on the API version 2.6.

Via the API we support:

You can also make bulk changes to contact's Subscription preferences with the latest version of the API.