Consent and subscriptions
Unsubscribe vs Suppression
Unsubscribe:
- A contact actively withdrawing permission to receive marketing messages via Campaigns
- Managed at the channel level (e.g., can unsubscribe from SMS but stay subscribed to Email)
- Only applies to Campaign messages, not Inbox messages
- Triggered by customer action (clicking unsubscribe link, texting "STOP")
Suppression:
- A compliance block that prevents you from sending messages to a specific identifier (phone number or email address)
- Works at the identifier level, not contact level
- Can be triggered multiple ways: unsubscribe, spam complaints, hard bounces, manual addition, or global suppression list
- More comprehensive than unsubscribeโincludes automatic blocks for deliverability issues
Key relationship: When a contact unsubscribes from a channel, it automatically creates a suppression (compliance block) for that identifier on that channel.
Example:
- A contact unsubscribes from SMS = Creates a suppression on their phone number for SMS
- That same contact's email can still receive emails (different identifier, different channel)
- If their email hard bounces = Automatic suppression added for that email address