The Mailchimp Preferences Center is here. We can now ask subscribers to choose their communication preferences instead of unsubscribing from all email marketing.
Time needed: 15 minutes
The Mailchimp Preferences Center is where your subscribers can manage which categories of communication they receive from you. Your subscribers will see the Preferences Center when they click the update profile hyperlink in the footer of the Mailchimp email campaign they receive from you.
The instructions below teach you how to use and publish the Preferences Center.
- Choose which Audience fields to show in the Preferences Center
By default all your Audience fields show in the Preferences Center. You may hide fields that you don’t want to show or show fields that are hidden.
- Create Groups
Contacts choose which categories of content they want to receive from you using Groups. Groups show by default in the Preferences Center.
- Create and style the Preferences Center
When viewing your Audience click ‘Preferences Center’ and then ‘Start building’. You’ll now be able to add your logo, change the default text, change colours and perform various other styling.
- Publish your Preferences Center
Before going live with your Audience Preferences Center you’ll be able to choose to use your own domain (custom domain) for the URL or you may use a Mailchimp provided domain.
When you’re ready click ‘Publish’ to make your Preferences Center Live. When subscribers click the ‘update preferences’ hyperlink to the bottom of your email campaigns they will be taken to the Preferences Center you’ve created (you may also include the *|UPDATE_PROFILE|* merge tag in your email campaigns which will automatically send subscribers to the Preferences Center).
Gary, can we just skip this if we only send one kind of email? I only send one kind of email, so it really is either stay subscribed or unsubscribe – no other options. If I don’t set up a preferences center, what will my people see if they click on that? (or will it not be displayed?) Thanks!
Hi Linda, in your case it’s best just to remove the preferences link from the footer of the Mailchimp email campaigns.
Hi Gary, I only have a free MailChimp account and I recently used the preferences Center. But I realize that it did not work since I did not create a website with my account. I can’t link my own domain since I used google site. I am wondering how do I unpublish the Preferences Center page and go back to use the MailChimp default one. Thank you!
Hi Jennifer, for some odd reason Mailchimp doesn’t allow users to remove the preferences center. Contact Mailchimp support and they’ll help.
Hi Gary,
I added Preferences Centre but it wont work for my needs. How do I got back to editing the Update Profile forms as I did before? I see no way to delete the Preferences Centre
You’ll need to contact Mailchimp support to do this.
Hello Gary,
When I was editing the Preference Center, there was a sentence “If you’d like to unsubscribe entirely, click Unsubscribe From All Emails at the bottom of this page.” beneath the description box and it could not be edited.
Could you please tell me where I could edit the sentence or possibly delete it?
Many thanks!
Hi Harris,
I don’t know of any means of editing nor deleting the unsubscribe link and text.
Hi Garry, is there a way to remove the “created with Mailchimp” badge/logo at the bottom of the subscription center page? I haven’t published my page yet, but I can see the badge in the design/customize step. Thanks!
Hi Jose, unfortunately there isn’t 🙁
How can free accounts contact Mailchimp support? Is there an email to write to?
Hi Samuele, Mailchimp provide personal support for paying customers only.
The email marketing center update merge profile link is going to a page not found. Now I can’t unpublished the preference center and now I can’t link to the form. I have a free account in Mailchimp and find it really aggravating that I can’t undo this thing that isn’t working and now I’m completely stuck. Any recommendations?
Hi Jennifer. This may help: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R07RksOnPlc . Unfortunately there are issues as you describe 🙁
Hey Gary, thanks for all your helpful content. Do you know if there’s a way to not require a separate email to update preferences? I created a preferences center but it’s pretty annoying that it takes you to a page where you have to add your email address, then follow a separate link to get to the preferences center. Is there a we can link the center directly from the email?
Hi Hannah, this may help – https://youtu.be/R07RksOnPlc