Zoho CRM and Email Unsubscribe

Problem Around Zoho’s Single “Email Opt Out” Checkbox

Zoho CRM comes with a field that is used by the system: Email Opt Out. Checking this box prevents Zoho (and potentially Zoho Campaigns) from sending emails to a recipient. Several features like Zoho unsubscribe links can interact with this field. The problem is this doesn’t provide a way to manage multiple Subscription Lists. One of the most notable examples is a customer not wanting any “fluffy” content, but only email relating to their order. This is also a concern held by the business: the need to divide the functions of relevant marketing material that may help convert better (what some customers may regard as “fluffy” content), and also the necessary functional emails required to allow a customer complete an order.

With Zoho CRM, these two potential email lists unfortunately converge on one checkbox: Email Opt Out. And this prevents ANY email content from reaching the customer. The result is that Businesses are left battling with the benefits/risks of providing customers with additional helpful material that might help convert, but at the risk of the customer unsubscribing and then taking themselves out of the contact loop entirely (effectively cutting them off from being a Lead any longer – just because they didn’t want to hear about any potential price discount, for example).

Ways To Add More Unsubscribe Options in Zoho CRM

Let’s start by settling on the idea that multiple email list categories is a good solution for both customer and business. Let’s choose four categories that should cover some typical lists as a scenario for a business:

  • Helpful Tips and Info
  • Future Discounts or Special Offers
  • Order Information Regarding My Specific Enquiry
  • Unsubscribe All

In order to achieve this, a web hook will need to be setup within Zoho that pings your own custom application – your own website that can interact with your Zoho instance and handle conditional logic in a bit more of a targeted way. And we’re also going to look at Zoho’s Email API so that we can choose when to send an email or not.

Step 1 – Setup New Checkbox Fields In Zoho

In Zoho, in each of these modules – Leads, Deals, Contacts – Add the following fields as checkboxes:

  • Unsubscribe From Tips
  • Unsubscribe From Specials
  • Unsubscribe From Order Information
  • Unsubscribe From All

Step 2 – Create Your Own Custom UI For Checkboxes

Step 3 – Your Unsubscribe UI Communicates With Zoho

Step 5a – Setup a Page on Your Website for Email Send Pings

Step5b – Have This Page Be Able to Send Emails via Zoho

IMPORTANT: in order for your authorised profile to be able to use Zoho’s email api, the scope of your profile muse be updated to include:
scope=ZohoCRM.send_mail.{module_name}.CREATE
(or) scope=ZohoCRM.send_mail.all.CREATE

If you need to learn how to set up a authorised client that can interact with a zoho instance, see here.

Step 6 – Update Workflows That Send Emails

Instead of a having Zoho Workflows send email templates from within Zoho (this automatically checks for Email Opt Out), point these workflows to send a webhook ping to your own website. You’ll need to send a few things over to your listening page. This is your custom web page to handle requests from Zoho. It then looks up Zoho, checks the contact, checks their subscription preferences, and depending on what type of email you plan to send, will reply with a true or false about whether its okay to send, and will then ping Zoho’s Email API to continue with sending the email (still making use of your email templates).

Step 7 – Sync These Fields into Zoho Campaigns

Step 8 – Zoho Campaigns: Include these fields into your Campaigns workflows and Syncing

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