Have you ever run into an issue where the email communication preferences form in Blackbaud Internet Solutions (BBIS™ ) has not been working as expected for donors? This can be extremely frustrating and may cost you a donation or a donor. Today, we are going to go through the steps of configuring a communication preferences form in BBIS. By doing this you may find your form, part, page, or email has been incorrectly setup.
The first step in configuring your BBIS™ communication and email preferences page is to log into BBIS™ and click on site explorer from the navigation menu, forms, and then click on the communication preferences form folder. If you do not see a communication preferences form folder or you do not see any forms in your folder, you will need to click new form button.
On the add screen, select the form type of Communication Preferences Form and enter a form name. Such as “Opt-Out Form”. By default, the Email opt-out option will be included in this form. For now, we will just include this option. On the properties window on the right-hand side we have the option to edit the element text. Here we’ll change the consent statement text to: “Unsubscribe” and the Caption to“Please remove me from your contact list”.
Once we’ve done this we can click save and that’s all you need to do to configure an unsubscribe form. Next, we’ll add the form to a page. Click on site explorer from the top navigation menu, then pages and templates, new page, select the appropriate template then name your opt-out page and click next. Click on an available content pane and then new part.
Under part type select form and then enter a part name and click next. You will then see a form to display option, click on the binoculars and hover over communication preferences forms then the form we created previously. Then click save.
We are done creating the communication and email preferences page! The only step left is to include this page as an unsubscribe link in emails from Blackbaud CRM™ or BBIS™.
In BBIS™ open the email editor, highlight the unsubscribe text, and click insert then link. In the dialog box, you will see an option for create link to special page. Click this dropdown and select the Email Opt-Out page created previously and then click insert.
When editing a Blackbaud CRM™ email, highlight the unsubscribe text, click the link icon, and select the special page radio icon then select the Email opt-out page we created previously.
If you already have a communication preferences form and page setup and you think it is not working, you can follow the steps listed above to make sure the correct page has been selected in your emails and that the pages in BBIS load and do not have any custom code interfering with the part.