There are a few ways to change your contacts' status to unsubscribed. They may opt-out organically, automatically (bounces and spam reports), or manually (by your action).
If you accidentally unsubscribed your contacts, we suggest reading this guide to discover how to convert them back to subscribers. You will find the instructions for both Email and SMS channels.
⚠️Unable to convert Email subscribers back to "Subscribed"
1. Create Segments of the contacts that were manually unsubscribed from your side. Go to Audience → Segments → Create Segment → Create from Scratch → Add Filter.
You may also filter out your contacts based on any other opt-out reason. However, we strongly recommend not changing the status of your unsubscribed contacts unless they were unsubscribed accidentally.
Start by using the rule Opted out → Reason → Were manually unsubscribed and Save this segment.
2. After saving your contacts to the Segment, Export them to the file.
3. Add an extra column in the exported file with the name "Email opt-in date."
Every unsubscribed contact will have the opt-out date assigned on his profile page. For the contacts to be subscribed, they need to have an opt-in date later than the opt-out one. Therefore, we recommend adding the opt-in date to the unsubscribed contacts' profiles.
You will see a long number of rows in the exported file, but you may ignore and even delete all of them except those with the email address. The rest of the information is still stored in the system.
Add an extra column, name it as an Email opt-in date, and fill in the column with today's time stamp (both date and time in your store time zone) in the following format: YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS or 2020-02-29 14:23:01. Make sure the opt-in date is later than the opt-out one!
Important! When using the format "2020-01-01" without specifying a time, it defaults to 12:00 p.m., which will not work for resubscribing contacts who unsubscribed on a specified date later than 12:00 p.m. To rectify this, consider the following options:
Use a date that is one day earlier than your intended opt-in date.
Add a specific time that isn't in the future.
4. Import contacts from the file by clicking Add contacts in your Audience.
5. Choose proper mapping for the Email and Email opt-in date fields.
6. Finalize the contact import from the file as usual.
That's it! The status for your existing contacts will be updated to "subscribed."
Important: You are fully responsible for converting your contacts to "subscribed" status; make sure those contacts agree to receive promotions from you!
⚠️Unable to convert SMS subscribers back to "Subscribed"
The SMS contacts' conversion process is the same as that for the email channel. The only difference is that instead of the Email address and the Email opt-in date, you will need to deal with the Phone number and SMS opt-in date.
1. Create Segments of the contacts you want to re-subscribe. For example, you may create a Segment of the unsubscribed from the SMS channel contacts.
2. After you save your contacts to the Segment, you should Export them to the file.
3. Add an extra column in the exported file with the name "SMS opt-in date". You need to add the SMS opt-in date column with today's time-stamp (both date and time in your store time zone) in the following format: YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS or 2020-02-29 14:23:01. Make sure the opt-in date is later than the opt-out one!
5. Choose proper mapping for the Phone number and SMS opt-in date fields.
6. Finalize the contact import from the file as usual.
That's it! The status for your existing contacts will be updated to "subscribed."
Did something go differently than expected? Please reach out to the Support team at [email protected], and we will help you.