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In Gainsight Customer Communities, is there a way to unsubscribe users from emails in the backend? I know that users can unsubscribe by using a link or in notification settings, but is there a way for admins to do this for them? 

For context, if a user unsubscribed from our companies email campaigns, we need to unsubscribe them from the community campaigns as well to be legally compliant. They can still receive transactional emails, but are not allowed campaign/reactivation/ or marketing emails.

To my knowledge, there is no way to do that. Neither via backend Control nor through the API (I just looked again). 

The user has to take that action themselves. 

I recall there being various ideas about that over the years, but I couldn’t find a good one to link here. Maybe I’m wrong about the functionality ​@Kenneth R can correct me. (If not, can you please link the most appropriate idea here Kennth?)

Candidly, this has been a concerning pain point for some time and I’m surprised it hasn’t been addressed due to the compliance implications with various regulations. 

Here’s a work around to help you in the mean time. 

  1. Custom Role for Unsubscribes
  2. Automate assigning this role (via the API) when someone unsubscribes via your other email marketing tool(s)
  3. Set strict rules to always ensure your distribution list for an email does not include users with that role
    • This will be a challenge when building your audience lists and prevents you from using Automated Email Campaigns (Segments are not yet supported)

It’s a bit more complex, but I’d actually advise this approach: 

  1. Custom Role for Opt-In to Email Campaigns
    • Bulk add to all existing users
    • Automate adding it to all net-new users
    • You don’t need to worry about when they unsubscribe from Email Campaigns via the CC unsubscribe option in the email or via their profile settings, CC will respect that preference even if they have the Opt-IN role on their profile. It just may be a bit confusing. 
      • Caveat: unless you’re looking to do the same thing, where an unsubscribe to community email campaigns needs to push to your other systems…  
  2. Automate Removing this role when someone unsubscribes via your other marketing tool(s)
  3. Set strict rules to always INCLUDE that opt-in role in your audience definition 
    • Building lists that are a mix of Role includes and role does not include isn’t supported, this solves that. If you need to email to a role-based list, your list criteria is that they have  {role} and {opt-in role}
    • Automated Email Campaigns would support this approach

One way to help ensure compliance to #3 in above: 

Create an email campaign that’s your Template. Set the recipient criteria to include the Opt-In role. 

Then train your team to always clone that email first, rather than use the button to create a new Email from scratch. 

Last thought: I imagine Gainsight support could do the unsubscribes in bulk on their end to get you up to compliance ASAP for those who have unsubscribed thus far. 

But you’d need something like the workaround above to maintain compliance for net new unsubscribes. 

Hi ​@DannyPancratz, 

Thank you for the advice and those suggested workarounds. I was thinking a custom role might be the best way to go if this functionality wasn’t available. I appreciate your thoughts! Thank you! I posted this as an idea as well if you’d like to add your vote to it. 

 

Candidly, this has been a concerning pain point for some time and I’m surprised it hasn’t been addressed due to the compliance implications with various regulations. 

Here’s a work around to help you in the mean time. 

  1. Custom Role for Unsubscribes
  2. Automate assigning this role (via the API) when someone unsubscribes via your other email marketing tool(s)
  3. Set strict rules to always ensure your distribution list for an email does not include users with that role
    • This will be a challenge when building your audience lists and prevents you from using Automated Email Campaigns (Segments are not yet supported)

It’s a bit more complex, but I’d actually advise this approach: 

  1. Custom Role for Opt-In to Email Campaigns
    • Bulk add to all existing users
    • Automate adding it to all net-new users
    • You don’t need to worry about when they unsubscribe from Email Campaigns via the CC unsubscribe option in the email or via their profile settings, CC will respect that preference even if they have the Opt-IN role on their profile. It just may be a bit confusing. 
      • Caveat: unless you’re looking to do the same thing, where an unsubscribe to community email campaigns needs to push to your other systems…  
  2. Automate Removing this role when someone unsubscribes via your other marketing tool(s)
  3. Set strict rules to always INCLUDE that opt-in role in your audience definition 
    • Building lists that are a mix of Role includes and role does not include isn’t supported, this solves that. If you need to email to a role-based list, your list criteria is that they have  {role} and {opt-in role}
    • Automated Email Campaigns would support this approach




Just an update on this, creating a custom role to unsubscribe users doesn’t quite work because in email campaigns you are not able to omit custom roles, you can only select filters to include users. The second approach you outlined would work best for because of this. 

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