Everything You Need to Know About Setting Up Subscription Types in Your CRM

TABLE OF CONTENTS
What Are Email Subscription Types?   |   Why Subscription Types Matter   |   Common Subscription Types   |
How to Set Up Subscription Types in Your CRM   |   Best Practices

Customer relationship management (CRM) systems are vital for businesses, helping manage customer communications and subscriptions effectively.

Giving customers control over the types of messages they receive — whether promotions, newsletters, or surveys — enhances their relationship with your business. On the other hand, bombarding them with unwanted emails can damage that connection.

Properly managing subscription preferences is not just good practice, but also essential for compliance with regulations like GDPR and CAN-SPAM, ensuring marketing and sales efforts are both effective and legally sound.

In this blog, learn how to properly set up and manage email subscription types for marketing and sales success.

What Are Email Subscription Types?

Email subscription types categorize the messages customers opt-in to receive when signing up for a mailing list. These types may include:

• Newsletters
• Product updates
• Promotions
• Event invitations
• Transactional emails
• Survey requests

Each category is designed to deliver specific content to customers who express interest, improving personalization.

When customers set their preferences, their profiles are segmented into "buckets," allowing targeted emails to be sent to relevant groups. This segmentation helps tailor marketing strategies and optimize spending, ensuring that only the most relevant content reaches each customer.

Why Subscription Types Matter

Email subscription types are an effective way to build trust by respecting customer preferences and delivering relevant content. This customer-focused strategy enhances engagement and ensures efficient email campaigns by allowing recipients to control the types of emails they receive.

Compliance with regulations like the CAN-SPAM Act (U.S.) and GDPR (EU) is crucial, as these laws require explicit opt-ins and preference management.

Effective CRM strategies help businesses stay legally compliant while improving segmentation, targeting, and overall engagement rates, ensuring only the most relevant emails reach the right audience.

Common Subscription Types to Set Up

Several types of subscription models can be set up within your CRM system, allowing customers to choose to receive all, some, or only essential communications. Common models include:

• Newsletter Subscriptions for non-promotional updates about the business.
• Product Updates & Announcements for news on new products or changes.
• Promotions & Special Offers for deals and sales.
• Event Invitations for notifying customers of events like webinars.
• Transactional Emails for order confirmations or status updates.
• Survey & Feedback Requests to gather customer input and insights.

How to Set Up Subscription Types in Your CRM

Define Your Subscription Categories

Identify the different types of content you send to your audience (newsletters, promotions, etc.). These can later be offered as choices to opt in or out of for your customers and managed in your CRM of choice.

Create Subscription Types in the CRM

Managing and creating subscription types in HubSpot and Salesforce is quick and simple, especially if you are already familiar with the platforms and portals.

• Specific instructions from HubSpot can be found here.
• Salesforce provides a helpful step-by-step guide found here.

Segment Your Contacts

Categorize your existing contacts based on their preferences. New contacts will be able to update their preferences but examine the engagement behavior data for current contacts to find the best fit for each group.

Add Subscription Options to Forms

Enable visitors to choose their preferences via sign-up forms, pop-ups, or landing pages.

Automate Subscription Management

Set up automation to manage opt-ins and opt-outs and update contact records accordingly.

Test the Process

Ensure all subscriptions are working properly and emails are being sent based on the selected preferences. It never hurts to subscribe to various email types yourself or have employees, friends, or family do the same.

Best Practices for Managing Email Subscription Types

To reiterate, subscription types offer key advantages for both customers and businesses. By segmenting communications based on customer preferences, businesses can improve efficiency and deliver relevant content.

This approach enhances engagement and fosters customer loyalty, as individuals feel their preferences are respected. Additionally, it reduces unsubscribe rates, since customers are less likely to feel overwhelmed by irrelevant information.

Follow these best practices for managing email subscription types to reap the benefits above and enhance your marketing strategy:

• Keep It Simple: Limit the number of subscription types to avoid overwhelming users and simplify segmentation in your CRM.
• Offer Clear Opt-Out Options: Make it easy for users to manage or change their subscription preferences. This helps customers feel more in control and helps your business comply with CAN-SPAM and GDPR.
• Regularly Review Subscription Preferences: Ensure your subscription list stays accurate by periodically reviewing and cleaning up your database. From removing inactive subscribers to re-sorting subscribers based on recent behavior, this can make a significant impact in maintaining efficiency.
• Provide Value: Make sure every subscription type offers genuine value to the customer to keep them engaged. Reevaluate this factor periodically, and eliminate any subscription types that may no longer provide value to customers or your business.
• Track and Optimize: Monitor engagement metrics to see which subscription types perform best and optimize your strategy accordingly.

Optimize Your CRM, Enhance Your Marketing Strategy

Tailoring communication by segmenting customers not only boosts efficiency but also makes customers feel like they're receiving valuable, relevant information, which enhances engagement, builds loyalty, and reduces unsubscribe rates by avoiding overwhelming, irrelevant messages.

Whether your CRM is well-established or relatively new, regularly review it to ensure it aligns with your current business strategies, delivers value to each customer segment, and complies with legal regulations — addressing any issues promptly to maintain optimal performance.

Looking for more CRM insights? Explore the essential HubSpot tools every business should be leveraging.