IN THIS ARTICLE:
Learn more about iClassPro's Email Blast Opt-In feature, including why it is important to receive customer's explicit consent to receive Email Blasts, and how opt-in works from the Customer Portal and Office Portal, and which reports will help locate families who have opted in/out to receive Email Blasts.

• How Email Blast Opt-In Works
• Why Explicit Opt-In is Important
• Customer Opt-In via the Customer Portal
• Staff Opt-In via the Office Portal
• Tracking Changes in the Audit Log
• Helpful Reports

How Email Blast Opt-In Works

Before a customer can begin receiving emails sent by staff members through the Email Blast tool, they must opt-in to receiving email blasts.

Why Explicit Opt-In is Important

It is important to get customer consent prior to sending out general and potentially promotional messages for several reasons, such as:

• Customers are more likely to look for and open emails from your business, if they know they’re coming first.
• Customers are less likely to be suspicious and mark your communications as SPAM with their email provider (which will make further messages to that address non-deliverable).
• According to privacy laws, it is illegal in some countries to send an email to a citizen of their country without their express consent (an action taken by that customer to knowingly begin receiving email communications).

Note: To also help businesses abide by email and marketing laws, any email blasts sent out from iClassPro contains a link for customers to be able to Unsubscribe, which will take the customer to a page in the Customer Portal where they must confirm their decision.

Click here for more information about the "Unsubscribe" option.

Customer Opt-In via the Customer Portal

When creating their account for the first time, the family will be given the following options:

• Yes, please send me emergency notifications and informational emails - selecting this option will opt the customer IN to receiving email blasts sent out from iClassPro.
• No, I only want to receive transactional emails such as enrollment confirmations, receipts, and statements - selecting this option will opt the customer OUT to receiving email blasts sent out from iClassPro.
  
  

Customers with established Customer Portal logins can change this acceptance status at any time by navigating to MY ACCOUNT>ACCOUNT INFORMATION, then clicking on the email they wish to update.

Staff Opt-In via the Office Portal

If a customer gives their consent to the business in person, a staff member can also opt-in or subscribe a family’s email address by editing the family and checking the “Subscribe to E-Mail Blast” option.

Tracking Changes in the Audit Log

Each opt-in and opt-out action is now tracked through iClassPro’s audit log so that there is a record of who made the change and on which date. The entries will look similar to the ones below:

Helpful Reports

Below are a few helpful topics for businesses that may want to review customers and their opt-in/opt-out status using reports in iClassPro.

• Finding New Family Accounts
  To find any new families created either online or by staff members within a period of time, you can use the Family Phonebook Report (FAM-2) with the filters for “Families Created From” and “Families Created Until” dates. This will search within that timeframe for any new families created within iClassPro and return a report with the Guardian Names, Physical Address, Phone Number and Primary Email address.
• Finding Families which have Unsubscribed
  To find any families which have at least one email address that is unsubscribed from email blasts, the best report to use is the Family Email List (FAM-3) with the filter for “Email Opt-In Status” set to “Only Emails that have Opted OUT”. This will return a list of the Primary Guardian on the account and the email(s) under the family which have been opted out.