Broadcast online marketing blog

An Email Preference Center (EPC) is a personalized email management center for email subscribers. It gives your users the ability to opt-in, unsubscribe and modify preferences for the emails you send them. An EPC is especially useful for marketers that have several email lists.

Marketers like segmenting databases and hate losing subscribers, while customers like to have control of their inbox. So the email preference center is often a good idea for increasing customer satisfaction, improving CPM and maximizing engagement and ROI.

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Here are the benefits for marketers:

1. Creates a permission-based relationship and shows respect for your email subscribers. This sends a signal to the audience that your communication is legitimate and that you are a responsible marketer who is interested in providing the best marketing vehicles for each subscriber.
2. Enables self-selecting segmentation whereby your users can choose which lists they want to join.
3. Creates a two-way communication center between you and your audience:
   - Include a comment or survey section
   - Preview “new publications” or “coming soon”
   - Add relational information (product, webcast, white paper) that falls under your communication category
   - Allow users to sign up for additional lists or emails
4. Reduces unsubscribes and friction between organization and its audience. With an EPC you give each subscriber a chance to view other lists and manage their subscriptions. So, marketers have a better change to save a subscription with an EPC rather than lose them altogether without one.
5. Empowers subscribers. Your users can control when, how and what information they receive. They can update an email address, modify the frequency of transmissions they receive, select the emails they want to see — customize their email.
6. Attracts qualified subscribers who may be influencers of others.
7. Showcases all the communication resources you have to offer.
8. Helps to pinpoint and target the interests of your audience. You can start seeing opt-in, interest and unsub trends.
9. Gives marketers cross-sell and up-sell opportunities.
10. Elicits mobile and social media preferences. The vast majority of US Internet users belong to Facebook (85%) or Twitter (49%) or both (Mashable). And by 2014, there will be a 90% mobile penetration rate — a whopping 6.5 billion mobile connections worldwide (Gartner).

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Should every marketer build an EPC? No. If you don’t have multiple lists, don’t have multiple product or service lines or audience segments, or if you send infrequent emails, then an EPC is probably overkill. But if you have multiple email lists and a savvy customer base, then having an EPC is a great idea. Subscribers get to choose how to personalize and manage your email communications. Marketers get happier, better-segmented subscribers and a consolidated view of subscriber preferences.

Is an EPC right for your company? Ask us.

Tags: EPC, manage, opt-in, preference center, preferences, preference_center, relationship, subscribers, subscriptions, unsub, unsubscribe

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