3 Steps to Unify Your Opt-Out Process and Keep Customers Coming Back

Texting has taken the retail world by storm, with 37 percent of U.S. retailers sending texts and emails to customers in-store, according to Retail Systems Research. In fact, 66 percent of people worldwide use texting to engage with their favorite brands. If you're texting customers, you’ve made an excellent step toward offering more convenient, personalized and efficient experiences across the board.  

But what about those who choose to opt out of texting with your brand? With more retailers reaching out than ever before, it shouldn’t be surprising that many customers will ask to be left alone from time to time. What matters is that your brand — and any vendors communicating with your customers on your behalf — are respecting their request to not be contacted. At the end of the day, it’s your brand and you have to protect it. 

However, it doesn’t mean these customers won’t be back. Therefore, it’s crucial to leave the door open for when they’re ready to communicate again. But without a fully unified opt-out process, the chances of their return can be pretty slim.  

Here are three steps to bring unification to your opt-out process: 

Step No. 1: Create an end-to-end map of relevant communication channels.   

The first and arguably most important step is to know which customers are on your opted-in list and to share this data across your vendors. From there, evaluate regular marketing communications, from sales to support, to understand where all texts are being sent from throughout the customer journey. For many brands, it’s not uncommon to work with multiple vendors that regularly communicate with customers on their behalf, whether related to payments, delivery or critical e-commerce processes such as cart abandonment.  

Retailers need to create an end-to-end map that provides holistic visibility into these processes and their corresponding communication channels. By knowing who is texting your customers, as well as what those notifications and updates look like, retailers can ensure all vendors are meeting brand messaging standards while positioning themselves at the forefront of the opt-out process instead of playing catch up.  

Step No. 2: Ensure opt-out requests and notifications are delivered in real time. 

The second step is to increase the overall speed and efficiency that opt-out requests are both received and communicated to outside vendors. Ideally, this includes the integration of an API-driven, real-time experience that automatically keeps all relevant parties up-to-date on who should and shouldn’t continue receiving communications from your brand. Ultimately, you don’t want your vendors to tell you they’ve tried to text an opted-out customer.  

Beyond improving request compliance and ensuring that no undesired texts slip through the cracks, sharing a complete, single view of the customer across your organization and vendors is one of the easiest ways for brands to consistently and accurately monitor their reputation score, text delivery and open rates, and the number of customers opting out.  

Step No. 3: Establish consistent communication across all channels and vendors. 

Finally, whether it’s being sent by your organization or through a third party, texts received by customers are a representation of your brand’s voice and will have a direct impact on the customer experience. Therefore, it’s crucial to communicate consistently across touchpoints to be sure all customer needs are met, which includes giving those who have opted out of your texting program as many opportunities as possible to opt back in.  

At the end of the day, we live in a time when customers increasingly value their privacy and ability to control how and when they interact with brands. Customers will give and take consent as they see fit, but this doesn’t mean they're permanently ending their relationship with your brand. Ensuring customers can easily opt back in when they’re ready will show you care for and respect the relationship you’ve built so far. 

Tara Kelly is the founder, president and CEO of SPLICE Software, a customer engagement company that specializes in using big data, small data and artificial intelligence to create messages that drive customer engagement and the desired call to action.