If you have any of the marketing solutions that integrate with Dynamics CRM, like Click Dimensions, Silverpop, or PowerMailChimp,(to name a few) then sooner or later, someone that you are emailing may choose to “unsubscribe” from your communications.
Is that a good thing or a bad thing?
Well, I think that is totally dependent on your situation, but it is not necessarily a bad thing. It is only that they don’t want you sending them bulk emails anymore.
Most of the modern email marketing packages (like the ones mentioned above), have some facility, and possibly a requirement, for allowing the recipient to unsubscribe from your bulk-communication.
Normally, this does not set a similar communication setting: Do not allow email, which controls even normal email correspondence to the recipient.
What to do Next?
So, the question is: What do you do with the people with whom you cannot bulk email?
Again, that depends on your situation.
If your only email interaction with them is a bulk email, then they are probably no longer useful to you so you can disable them (I don’t recommend deletion).
If you have a mix of individual communications and bulk email, then you can probably leave them active and only engage when you have communication specific to them.
Identify Contacts with Do Not Allow Bulk Email
You may use Advanced Find to locate these Contacts, but first you must enable the field for searching as outlined in this article.
Here is the actual Advanced Find you need to use:
Note: I also add the Do not allow bulk email and Do not allow email fields to the results to perform a comparison.
Final Thoughts
I would advise caution when deactivating Contacts who have the Do not allow bulk email set. You really need to understand why that setting was set. Here are a few things to watch out for:
1. Does your email marketing software have an automated policy that will disable bulk emails should it receive a hard or soft bounce?
2. Did the recipient select unsubscribe manually?
3. Did the original recipient forward the email to other people within their organization and did one of them click unsubscribe. (the marketing software will no know this, in most cases.)
4. When unsure of why this setting was checked, then email the recipient individually and ask. I have seen instances where someone was unsubscribed and neither they nor I know why.
Anyway, just some things to think about. I like having my data as clean as possible and this is just one more method for that.
