Create a subscription center

Article
05/15/2018
12 minutes to read

Applies To: Dynamics Marketing

Important

Microsoft Dynamics Marketing has been discontinued and is no longer available. All customer data related to this product has been permanently deleted from all Microsoft servers and is no longer available for extraction. This documentation is being provided for historical purposes only.

All marketing emails must include a subscription center plug-in, which creates a link to a webpage that contacts can use to add or remove themselves from your marketing lists and update their contact details. Emails that don’t include this plug-in will fail validation and can’t be activated or sent until the plug-in is added. This, in addition to other plug-in and content requirements, helps ensure that your marketing mails are CAN-SPAM compliant. More information: CAN SPAM compliance guidelines, Validate, test and send messages

A subscription center webpage shows a check box for each static marketing list that you have enabled for the page. You can include all available marketing lists (all static lists that are active, belong to the same company as the subscription center, and have their Subscription check boxes selected) or a subset of the available lists, which you choose manually. More information: List management and segmentation, Manage contacts

When users subscribe or unsubscribe using one of the check boxes, their contact record is added to or removed from the associated marketing list. All subscription centers also provide a Remove me from all mailing lists check box. If a contact submits a subscription center page with this check box selected, their contact record will be marked with the Do not email flag set, so they’ll no longer receive any marketing emails. More information: Manage contacts

Prerequisites

To work with subscription centers, you must have Edit/View Email Marketing privileges. More information:** **Work with user accounts and staff contacts

View and manage subscription centers

To work with subscription centers (and other types of email plug-ins), go to Settings > Campaign Management > Email Marketing Plug-ins. This brings you to the Plug-Ins list page, which provides many of the standard controls for searching, sorting, filtering, adding, removing, and viewing items in the list, plus other common features. For more detailed instructions, see Learn how to work and get around in Microsoft Dynamics Marketing.

All types of email plug-ins are shown on the Plug-Ins list page. Subscription centers are labeled as such in the Type column.

To create a subscription center, click the New button New button on the toolbar to open the Plug-In Type pop-up window. Select “Subscription Center” from the Select the Type drop-down list, and then click OK to go to the maintenance page for your new subscription center plug-in.

When you create or edit a subscription center, the following settings are provided.

Setting	Description
Active	Select this check box to activate the current record; clear it to deactivate the record. Active records are always shown on the list page and are also available for use in other parts of Dynamics Marketing. Inactive records are usually hidden in the list view and aren’t available elsewhere. When you delete a record on the list page, it’s not actually deleted, just set to inactive. On the list page, you can toggle to show or hide inactive records in the list.
Name	Enter a short but descriptive name. This value will identify the current record in list views, type-ahead fields, drop-down lists, and other areas of Dynamics Marketing. Choose a value that you and all other users are likely to recognize in the future.
Language	Choose the language that the subscription center should be displayed in. For more information about how display text and multi-language support works for subscription centers, and how to request a non-standard language, see Customize and translate text shown in a subscription center.
Created by	Shows the name of the contact that created the current record. This is automatically set to match the current user when the record is created, but you can also change it. The specified contact must already exist in the database; type-ahead assistance is provided (or enter “%%” as a wildcard to scroll through all contacts). This setting can affect which users are able to see and edit the current record, depending on the users’ security settings and team memberships. More information: Work with user accounts and staff contacts and Define and manage teams.
Company	Enter the name of the company that the current record belongs to. The company must already exist in the database; type-ahead assistance is provided (or enter “%%” as a wildcard to scroll through all companies). The current record is only available for use with other relevant entities that are also associated with this same company. For example, a marketing message associated with the company Woodgrove Bank can only be sent to contacts belonging to Woodgrove Bank and included in campaigns associated with Woodgrove Bank.
All Subscription Lists	Select this check box to show all available subscription lists in your subscription center; clear it to choose from available lists. Available lists are those that are active, belong to the same company as the subscription center, and have the Subscription check box selected. For more information about the Subscription check box, see List management and segmentation. Clear this check box if you want the Subscription Center maintenance page to include a Subscription Lists tab at the bottom of the page for choosing lists to include (see also the next section of this topic). When this check box is selected, qualifying new lists will be added to your subscription center automatically. When cleared, the list selection is static, so you must add new lists manually. Deactivated (deleted) lists are never shown.
Contact Information	Choose which (if any) contact fields you want to display on the page. These values will be taken from and submitted to the current contact’s contact record. Select the View check box for each field you want to make visible; to make it editable, select the Edit check box.
Redirect URL	Enter the URL of a page to show after a contact submits the form. This should typically be a page from your website that displays a welcome or thank-you message. Leave this blank, Dynamics Marketing to show an alert box that thanks the contact for the submission.
Head Content	Enter code to be placed in the <head> section of the generated HTML page. You’ll typically use this area to style the form; an initialized set of relevant style classes is provided by default. To see a more detailed version of these styles, click the More Info link. You can also add other types of <head> content here, but you can’t add JavaScript.
Body Content and Footer Content	Use these settings to add content above (Body) and below (Footer) the generated input form. Each of these fields provides a rich text editor for styling your content. Click the Edit button next to either of these fields to open the related content in a full-screen editor. From here, you can also enter pure HTML code by using the HTML view (for example, to place an image), or continue to work with the styling toolbar by using the Design view.
One Click Text	If a contact clicks a one-click subscribe link in a marketing email, they’ll be subscribed to the list they chose and then shown the subscription center configured for the email. However, in this case, the subscription center will only show the One Click Text and the Footer Content. (The One Click Text isn’t shown when contacts view the full subscription center page.) More information: One-click Subscribe plug-ins
Preview	Click here to see a preview of your subscription center as contacts will see it (opens in a new window). Important Subscription centers support only the standard languages provided out-of-the-box with Dynamics Marketing, and they ignore all language customizations (other than contact labels). This is because subscription centers are hosted by the bulk messaging server, which doesn't have access to the custom language files available to your private Dynamics Marketing instance. Be careful when you use the preview function provided on the Subscription Center maintenance page. The preview does use your local language files, including overrides, and custom languages. However, these customizations won't be visible to contacts at run time. For more information about how multi-language support works for subscription centers, and how to add request a non-standard language, see Customize and translate text shown in a subscription center.

Customize the list selection

By default, your subscription center includes all active, static lists that both belong to the same company as the subscription center and that have their Subscription check boxes selected. If you prefer to display only a subset of the available lists, then do the following:

Set up your subscription center by using the settings described in the previous section.
Clear the All Subscription Lists check box (if it’s not already), and then click Save. The page reloads to show the Subscription Lists related-information tab. This tab shows each marketing list that will be included in your subscription center (if any).
Click the Add button on the Subscription Lists tab toolbar.
The Select List/Queries pop-up window opens. Use the search form to find the lists you want to include in your subscription center (search for “%%” to find all available lists). Then select the check box for each list that you want to add, and then click Submit.
The Subscription List tab now shows each list that you added to the subscription center.

To remove a list, select its check box on the Subscription List tab, and then click the Delete button Delete button on the toolbar.

Important

Regardless of your settings here, all subscription centers provide a Remove me from all mailing lists check box. It’s probably to your advantage to include as many actual marketing lists as appropriate in your subscription center to give your contacts more options.

Customize and translate text shown in a subscription center

The text displayed in a subscription center comes from various sources. It works as follows:

The text used for contact labels (such as first name and last name) will be those from the Settings > Administration > Languages settings for your selected language (“Contact” category, see also Customize user interface text).

Note

The contact labels are published to the bulk messaging server (which hosts the subscription center) the first time you save your subscription center settings. If you later use the Languages settings to change a contact label that should appear on existing subscription centers, then you must open each existing subscription center plugin, choose any different language, click Save, and then set the language back to its original setting and click Save again.
The text used for other subscription center labels (such as “Remove me from all mailing lists”, headings, and buttons) are permanently stored on the bulk message server and can't be customized. (This applies to some of the text displayed by the Forward-to-a-Friend plug-in, too.) Any customizations that you make to these labels by using the Languages settings won't be brought into your live subscription center—but you will see them in your local preview, so be careful.

Note

The subscription center normally supports only the standard languages provided in the language-pack download for Dynamics Marketing. For a complete list, see Microsoft Dynamics Marketing Translation Guide.

One exception to this is Norwegian, which is available for subscription-center and Forward-to-a-Friend plug-ins even though Microsoft doesn't provide a full language pack for Norwegian. Norwegian labels are available on all Dynamics Marketing bulk-message servers, but to enable them you must set up Norwegian as a custom language as described in the following procedure.
The names shown for the marketing lists come from the Name settings for the lists themselves. They’re not language specific.

To enable Norwegian language text for the un-customizable parts of your subscription center and/or forwarding forms :

In Dynamics Marketing, go to Settings > Administration > Languages.
Select the check box for the language you normally use when working in Dynamics Marketing, and then click the Export button on the toolbar.
The Export user interface text dialog box opens. Choose the All standard text option and click Export.
Open the exported file with a text editor and find the following text (which is right at the top of the file):

<Language xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" Name="English (United States)" SystemName="English (United States)" Description="English (United States)" LanguageCode="en-US" HelpURL="http://www.marketingpilot.com/help/en-US/webserver_R15" Type="Base">

Make the following changes:
- Name="English (United States)": change the value (the right side of the equation) to identify your new language; for example, "English with Norwegian Sub Center".
- SystemName="English (United States)": change the value to something similar to the one you chose for the Name value.
- Description="English (United States)": change the value to something similar to the one you chose for the Name value.
- LanguageCode="en-US": change this value to the culture code for Norwegian, which is "nb-NO". It must match exactly.
Save the edited file using the culture code as its name and an XML extension (nb-NO.xml for Norwegian).
Go back to the Languages page in Dynamics Marketing and click the Import button .
The Import user interface text dialog box opens. Click Choose File to open a file browser and use it to find and select the language file you just saved. Leave the check box clear and click Import.
The import operation will take a few seconds and when it's done, you'll get a confirmation message. To continue, click Close. You should now see your new language listed on the Languages page.
Click the new language name to open its details. Use the settings here to localize each contact field that you want to include in your subscription center. You'll find them under the Contact category (see also Customize user interface text).
Create a new subscription center as described earlier in this topic, and be sure to choose your new language name for the Language setting.

Note

As mentioned previously, the contact labels are published to the bulk mail server the first time you save your subscription center settings. If you later use the Languages settings to change a contact label that should appear on existing subscription centers, then you must open each existing subscription center plugin, choose any different language, click Save, and then set the language back to its original setting and click Save again.

Legal and privacy notices

Customer shall not use email marketing features in violation of applicable laws.

Please note the Microsoft Dynamics Marketing Services may include links to third-party services, like Facebook or Twitter, or Microsoft products or services, like Microsoft Dynamics 365, whose privacy practices may differ from the Microsoft Dynamics Marketing Services. Your use of such services, and any information you provide to a third party, is governed by their privacy statements. We encourage you to review these other privacy statements.