Data Capture Best Practice

When data is captured outside of the features of our service permission and compliancy with applicable law is still required. Importing data into our application (CSV upload, via the API etc.) implies acknowledgment of and agreement with our Terms of Use.

Forms and Automation enable data to be captured and entered directly into the application.

A method for ensuring quality of data, improving security and to confirm consent is to automatically send a confirmation that contains a unique link and that the person must click in order to complete the process.

This approach is commonly known as "double opt-in" and is something that regular users of the internet will be familiar with. Double opt-in is a very good method for ensuring that consent is given and the details of which, including date, time and IP address, will be stored for future reference if needed.

Click here to find out more about how to make use of double opt-in when capturing data.

Every email that gets sent should always include a clearly displayed and accessible link for people to opt-out. There are exceptions to this for more transactional type emails such as receipts and invoices but in general terms a User should always be able to opt-out.

Where people are subscribed to multiple Lists it's also advisable to include a link to allow people to set their own preferences. This puts recipients in control over what types of emails they want to receive.

There are a number of different types of Spam traps and ISPs including AOL, Yahoo and Microsoft will "recycle" old and unused email addresses in an attempt to detect senders that do not keep their Lists clean.

The time between an email addresses becoming dormant and then being converted into a Spam trap varies (and it does not happen for every dormant email address) but it makes complete sense to have a process in place to periodically remove email addresses that do not engage through opens or clicks.

A common approach is to implement a process where any email address that does not engage for a period of 9 months becomes suppressed entirely.

Overall List size will reduce by removing inactive email addresses but it will result in List quality being improved and will also reduce complaint rates.

Auto-cleansing is the automated process of suppressing email addresses of Users that have either complained or where repeated delivery failures have been encountered when sending emails. This process helps to keep Lists 'clean' by ensuring bad email addresses and User records that have previously complained can never be used.

There are a number of features that can be used to suppress email addresses and it is recommended that you take the time to understand the differences between each type of suppression and how they can work in combination to maintain customised preferences for individual Users.

Here's a brief explanation of the available options...

• Email addresses that are added to the Global Suppression will never receive an email regardless of what Lists they appear on.

• List level suppression is useful when there is the requirement to allow people to receive specific types of emails based on topics of interest. For example, a person may want to stay updated about news relating to football but may no longer be interested in receiving news about cricket.

• The Realtime Block List allows for individual email addresses and entire domains to be blocked by the application. Not only does this stop emails from being sent for anything that is listed it also stops data getting into the application through file upload, API, Forms etc.

• On the Campaign send screen there is a feature that enables entire Lists to be excluded. It's a useful feature for suppressing Users when there is duplication across Lists and, for example, allows you to send to all of the people on a selected List whilst ensuring the email does not get sent to anyone that appears on a different List.