Consent and Suppression FAQ

Disclaimer

This information is not legal advice. While we do our best to provide useful information to use as a starting point, Yotpo SMS & Email advises all merchants to obtain professional legal advice to ensure that all marketing campaigns are sent in full compliance with all applicable laws.

Consent and Suppression Overview

Understanding consent and suppression is key to ensuring that your SMS and email marketing remains in line with compliance regulations.

What is Consent?

Consent refers to your customer agreeing to receive marketing messages from you. Your customers can be split into 4 main categories of consent. They can move from one category to another so these categories are not necessarily permanent. The categories are defined as follows:

• Subscriber: has explicitly opted in to receive marketing communications

• Unsubscriber: was at one point subscribed, but has opted out from marketing communications

• Non-subscriber (or Never Subscribed): has never subscribed for marketing (but has never opted out either)

• Suppressed: the system or you decided to suppress this profile from receiving emails and/or SMS

Important

Customers must give consent for each channel of communication because consent is not transferable between channels. This means that SMS marketing consent can’t be considered email marketing consent and vice versa.

What is Implicit Consent vs Explicit Consent?

Yotpo SMS & Email recommends only using explicit consent when gathering subscribers and only accepts explicit consent for SMS & Email marketing. Below are our definitions for implicit and explicit consent:

• Implicit consent: an individual gives their email address for some business purpose, but does not explicitly state that they want to receive marketing emails.

• Explicit consent: an individual explicitly shares that they want to receive marketing emails.

Currently Yotpo SMS & Email only supports sending email marketing and SMS messages to subscribers with explicit consent.

Note

Yotpo SMS & Email labels anyone who has given their email address without explicit consent as non-subscriber.

Understanding Suppression

Suppression has different definitions depending on the channel.

What is SMS Suppression?

Yotpo SMS & Email suppresses phone number for two reasons:

• A number is invalid (ex: +110101010101010101).

• A number is a landline where messages cannot be delivered.

What is Email Suppression?

Email subscribers can become suppressed via:

• Imported lists during migration

• Yotpo’s backend system has identified the address as unable to receive email

• Manual suppression

During the migration process, you can import lists of suppressed subscribers which allows Yotpo SMS & Email to understand the customers that have already been suppressed.

However Yotpo SMS & Email continues to suppress subscribers on an ongoing basis to optimize list health based on the following events:

• If an email address soft bounces 4 times

• If an email address hard bounces 1 time

• If we identify that the email domain is non-existent

• If an email address has marked an email as spam

Note

If someone marks one of your emails as spam, their email address will stop receiving messages from that specific store. However, if you have more than one store and they’ve signed up to get emails from each one, they can still get emails from your other stores unless they mark those as spam too.

Sending Messages

Who can receive SMS communications?

Tip

You can manually unsubscribe a customer by accessing their Customer Timeline from the Customer page and clicking Unsubscribe under their SMS and Email consent.

Who can receive Email communications?

Email marketing messages can only be sent to explicitly consenting subscribers which means removing unsubscribers and skipping suppressed subscribers.

Note

Nonsubscribers/Never Subscribed is not currently supported. However, transactional emails can be sent to all email types.

What are transactional messages?

Transactional messages are not marketing messages. These messages are automated messages sent in response to a customer’s action like the customer making a purchase and should not contain marketing content. Currently, Yotpo SMS & Email sends transactional messages to subscribers, non-subscribers, and unsubscribers.

Important

Customers can’t unsubscribe from transactional messages, only marketing messages.

What are marketing messages?

Marketing messages are generally aimed at promotional activities and may include offers and product recommendations. Currently, Yotpo SMS & Email sends marketing messages only to subscribers.

The table below illustrates by email message type what subscribers can receive messages.

Note

Special Transactional Messages are messages connected to orders and transactions like regular transactional messages, however these messages can be connected to transactional events in Yotpo’s Loyalty and Referrals product.