What is an email preference center?

Hi Molly -

An Email Preference Center is a personalized Web page for each customer, client, member and potentially even prospective customers. It's designed to give people the ability to opt in to, and opt out of, very specific email vehicles, such as newsletters, sale alerts, news bulletins, and product information. Depending on how many products you have, one individual may opt in for a handful, or even dozens, of lists. It also alows users to dictate the frequency with which they want to receive communication (daily, weekly etc), the format (html or text versions), length (# of articles, events etc) and even delivery vehicle (email, RSS etc).

Having this type of user personalization is a big benefit for communicating relevant information and supporting user engagement.

Here are a couple good examples:

1. Google Alerts is a simple and good example of how you could incorporate communication preferences. Its hyper-personalized to search terms and content that is appealing to the user. To set up a sample, go to http://www.google.com/alerts

2. Amazon is an example of a retailer that gives you options to receive information about 30 different product categories. If you have an account go here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/gss/ccp

3. The New York Times (https://select.nytimes.com/mem/email.html) is a good example of a la carte content from a media publisher. Its not quite as hyper-personalized as Google Alerts but it gives the user a multitude of options.

Hopefully this helps. Good luck.