CFM provides a flexible framework that allows respondents to unsubscribe from and resubscribe to survey communications delivered through messaging channels and personalized survey links. With the introduction of Unsubscription Lists, you can now support both global opt-outs and program-, brand-, or business unit-specific opt-outs. This gives respondents greater control over the communications they receive, enabling them to stop survey invitations from a specific brand or program while continuing to participate in surveys from other brands or initiatives within the organization.

Consent scopes

There are now two scopes at which consent is captured and enforced:

• Global survey opt-out: The respondent is opted out of all survey communications, across every brand and programme.

• List-level opt-out: The respondent is opted out only from distributions associated with a specific Unsubscription List. All other programmes continue to reach them.

What it enables

Global opt-out always takes precedence over list-level opt-out.

• Unsubscription: Participants can opt out of survey communications by utilizing the simple and compliant unsubscribe options found in every message.

• Resubscription: Participants who reconsider their decision can rejoin via the same channel with an easy, one-click confirmation.

• Audience management: Administrators have the ability to view, filter, and handle unsubscribed profiles directly within the Audience module, which guarantees precise and compliant targeting.

• Multi-brand consent management: Administrators have the ability to establish Unsubscription Lists that reflect brands, programs, regions, journeys, or any survey communication channels. They can also manage the distribution of these lists to prevent excessive suppression of respondents in unrelated programs.

Business Use Cases

• Streamlining Unsubscription for Compliance and Trust: Organizations often need to ensure that survey distribution aligns with privacy regulations such as GDPR and CAN-SPAM, while also offering a user-friendly opt-out experience. This typically involves adding clear unsubscribe links in email and SMS communications and supporting commands like “STOP” in WhatsApp messages. By using tools such as the Audience module, teams can monitor unsubscribed contacts and automatically exclude them from future distributions. Filters like "CFM Survey Unsubscribe" further help in managing and tracking unsubscription statuses effectively, ensuring both compliance and respectful engagement with audiences.

• Multi-brand Unsubscriotion: In organizations that manage multiple brands, programs, or communication streams within the same CFM instance, Unsubscription Lists help maintain respondent preferences at a granular level. When a respondent unsubscribes from a survey communication associated with a specific list, they are added only to that corresponding Unsubscription List. As a result, they will no longer receive survey invitations for that particular brand, program, or campaign, but can continue to receive communications from other lists unless they choose to opt out of those separately or submit a global opt-out, which overrides all list-level subscriptions.

Unsubscription Lists help you maintain privacy compliance while giving respondents greater control over their communication preferences. They support program-level consent management, allowing respondents to opt out of a specific brand or survey program without being removed from all communications. The feature also provides streamlined audience management, prevents over-suppression, offers operational visibility into opt-out activity, and is fully backward compatible with existing global opt-out behavior.

Prerequisites

You would need View and Edit Distribution permissions to be enabled inorder to access Distribution.

Additionally, to access and manage Unsubscription Lists, you must be assigned the appropriate Unsubscription List permissions, the following permissions must also be enabled:

• View Unsubscription Lists: Allows you to access the Unsubscription Lists module, view the Record Manager, and review list details.

• Create/Edit Unsubscription Lists: Allows you to create, modify, activate, deactivate, and delete Unsubscription Lists based on their assigned access.

• Per-List Access Control: Access can be set up at the individual list level for particular users or user groups. View access enables you to see and utilize a list in subsequent workflows, whereas Edit access encompasses all viewing capabilities and also permits you to change or remove the list.

Setting Up Unsubscription Flow

Unsubscription messages are included by default in all survey invitations and can be customized to match your brand voice, communication style, and regulatory requirements. While these messages are not mandatory in CFM, we strongly recommend keeping them enabled to help you protect respondent privacy, build trust, and support compliance with regulations such as GDPR, CAN-SPAM, CASL, and TCPA. Before removing unsubscription options from your survey communications, ensure that you review the privacy and communication laws applicable to your region.

Associating an Unsubscription List with a distribution

To allow program- or brand-level opt-out, administrators can link an Unsubscription List to a distribution during the Schedule Settings phase:

• Activate the Use Unsubscription List toggle. By default, this toggle is turned off, and the distribution adheres to global opt-out behavior exclusively, ensuring backward compatibility with current distributions.

  • When the toggle is activated, choose one Unsubscription List from the dropdown menu. This field becomes mandatory once the toggle is turned on.

  • The chosen list defines the consent boundary for the distribution: individuals who have opted out of that particular list will be excluded, whereas those who have opted out of different lists will continue to receive the invitation.

• Global opt-out always takes precedence: If a respondent has unsubscribed globally, they will not get the invitation no matter their membership in the list.

• The same behavior is consistently observed across all supported channels.

This enables multi-brand organizations to conduct simultaneous survey programs without excessively limiting respondents. For instance, a customer who opts out of the Loyalty Programme list will still receive invitations related to the Post-Purchase Feedback list, unless they have decided to opt out globally.

Setting up Unsubscription Lists for multi-brand opt-out

Unsubscription Lists

Unsubscription Lists serve as opt-out categories at the program level. They allow administrators to target survey opt-out actions to a particular brand, journey, campaign, region, or communication program, rather than implementing every opt-out on a global scale.

Utilize Unsubscription Lists when the organization operates various survey communication programs and wishes for respondents to opt out of one program while maintaining their eligibility for all other programs.

Creating an Unsubscription List

1. Navigate to Audience Management in the left pane and then click Unsubscription Lists.

   

   

2. Click + Create Unsubscription List.

   

   1. Navigate to the Unsubscription List section and complete the required information to establish and assign the unsubscription list to the appropriate distributions for managing opt-out behavior.

      

      1. Name: Add a meaningful name of the List.

      2. Description: Add a meaningful description.

   2. Navigate to Group permissions section and set user permissions and provide edit and view access to the user and click Save. Once saved, it becomes available for profile-level assignment and distribution-level selection.

      

Managing Unsubscription Lists in Record Manager

The Unsubscription Lists Record Manager is the central place to view and manage all lists.

Navigate to Audience Management in the left pane and then click Unsubscription Lists to access the Record Manager.

The actions that may be available include viewing, editing, activating or deactivating, and deleting a list, based on the user's permissions and access for each list.

Associating an Unsubscription List with a distribution

When configuring a distribution, you have the option to decide if it should solely adhere to global opt-out behavior or also take into account a particular Unsubscription List.

In Schedule Settings, use the Use Unsubscription List toggle:

• Toggle OFF: This is the default behaviour. No list selection is required and only the Global Survey Opt-out value is checked.

• Toggle ON: You must select one Unsubscription List. The selected list becomes the opt-out boundary for that distribution.

When the toggle is activated, the Unsubscription List field becomes a required single-select field. At any given moment, a distribution can be linked to only one Unsubscription List.

If the field is not filled in while the toggle is ON, the distribution setup can only be finalized after a list is selected. If the toggle is OFF, the previous behavior will remain the same.

This enables multi-brand organizations to conduct simultaneous survey programs without excessively limiting respondents. For instance, a customer who opts out of the Loyalty Programme list will still receive invitations related to the Post-Purchase Feedback list, unless they have decided to opt out globally.

Setting up un-subscription Messages

Setting up un-subscription message in Email Distribution

The steps are listed below:

• When creating an email distribution, you can add an unsubscribe link by clicking the "Unsubscribe Link" button in the footer section of the email body, thank-you message, or reminder message.

  

Setting up un-subscription message in WhatsApp distribution

• When creating a WhatsApp distribution, you can include an unsubscription message in the footer of the body, thank-you, or reminder messages. Be sure to include the keyword "STOP" in the message footer, as it allows respondents to unsubscribe.

  

Setting up un-subscription message in SMS distribution

• When creating an SMS distribution, you can add an unsubscription link in the footer of the SMS body, thank-you message, or reminder message.

  

Respondent Unsubscription/Resubscription Behavior

• List-level unsubscribe page: If the invitation is part of a distribution that has the Use Unsubscription List feature activated, the respondent will only be unsubscribed from that specific program or list. The page prompts the respondent to verify their desire to unsubscribe from this program. Upon confirmation, the profile will be included in the chosen Unsubscription List.

• Global unsubscribe page: If the invitation is part of a distribution that does not utilize an Unsubscription List, the respondent will be removed from all survey communications. Upon confirmation, the Global Survey Opt-out value will be applied to the profile.

• Resubscribe behaviour: When participants return to the same link after opting out, they have the option to resubscribe. If they unsubscribe at the list level, resubscribing will eliminate the profile from that Unsubscription List. In the case of a global unsubscribe, resubscribing will reset the global opt-out status.

• Channel Specific Behaviour:

  • WhatsApp keyword: The WhatsApp STOP/START functionality remains operational as a keyword-driven process. Because a keyword response may not accurately indicate which program the user wishes to unsubscribe from, STOP should be considered a universal opt-out action unless a distinct implementation for a specific channel is established.

  • Email/SMS: Participants can use the unsubscription link located in the footer of the email or SMS to discontinue receiving future survey notifications.

    To resubscribe, respondents can revisit the same unsubscription link found in the original message. Upon returning to it, they will encounter the following message and will have the option to resubscribe through the link once more.

  • WhatsApp:

    • Respondents can unsubscribe by replying “STOP” to the WhatsApp message.

    • Respondents can resubscribe at any time by replying “START” to the same chat.

Monitoring and Managing Unsubscribed Profiles

• After a recipient unsubscribes, their unsubscription status is reflected in the "Survey Unsubscribed" field within their profile properties in the Audience module.

  

• You can manually resubscribe unsubscribed profiles if needed; however, a warning message will be shown when attempting to do so directly from the profile.

  

• You can filter unsubscribed profiles using the “CFM Survey Unsubscribe” filter in the Audience module.

  

Additional profile fields for multi-brand unsubscription:

• Unsubscribed Lists: Shows the Unsubscription Lists that the profile has opted out of. These values can appear as selected list values or tags and can be added or removed manually by authorised users.

• Global Survey Opt-out: Indicates whether the profile is opted out of all survey communications. This is the global override and takes precedence over any list-level status.

When Global Survey Opt-out is enabled, the profile will be excluded from all survey distributions, irrespective of any Unsubscribed Lists. Conversely, if Global Survey Opt-out is disabled, list-level suppression will only be applicable for distributions related to the lists associated with the profile.

Eligibility and suppression logic

The system uses the following rules to decide whether a survey invite should be sent or suppressed.

Rule hierarchy: Global opt-out always overrides list-level logic. List-level suppression is checked only when global opt-out is not set and the distribution is associated with an Unsubscription List.

Distribution report statuses

Distribution reports should make it clear whether an invite was suppressed or whether a respondent unsubscribed after receiving an invite.

Preview

You can verify the setup through the following steps:

• Email and SMS Distribution:

  When creating a distribution, use the preview feature to check how the unsubscription link appears in the footer. To test its functionality, send the email or SMS to a test account, click the unsubscription link, and verify that the profile’s status updates correctly in the Audience module.

• WhatsApp Distribution: For SMS or WhatsApp distributions, preview your message to ensure the “STOP” unsubscription keyword is included. To test, create a test distribution targeting a specific test account, reply with “STOP,” and confirm that the profile is unsubscribed in the Audience module. To resubscribe, reply with “START” and verify the status updates accordingly.

• Unsubscription List testing: Generate a test Unsubscription List, activate the Use Unsubscription List feature on a test distribution, choose the list, and send the invitation to a test profile. Click on the unsubscribe link and confirm that the profile is included in the chosen Unsubscription List instead of being universally opted out.

  After completing the testing, replicate the test distribution, implement any necessary modifications, and launch it for the intended audience.

Best Practices

• Always include a clear and visible unsubscription option in all survey messages to ensure compliance with privacy regulations.

• Use filters effectively to segment and manage your audience for targeted and compliant distributions.