With a pause option, subscribers can temporarily opt out of receiving campaign messages from your shop without opting out of SMS altogether.
Giving your subscribers the option to pause SMS notifications from your brand:
- Allows subscribers to opt out of receiving messages during campaign-heavy times of the year (e.g., Black Friday and Cyber Monday, holidays, etc.).
- Provides a better customer experience for subscribers who may not wish to receive SMS during sensitive times of year (i.e. Mother's Day or Father's Day).
- Pauses present an appealing alternative to subscribers who may be considering opting out of your SMS messages entirely.
- Helps ensure you send messages to those subscribers who will engage with them, giving you more accurate performance metrics (and helping with spend).
How a Pause Option Works
Giving subscribers an option to temporarily opt out of text messages from your shop requires a few steps.
- Create a pause-related keyword with a confirmation letting the subscriber know they're paused and when they can expect to hear from you.
- Create a Non-Paused Segment that you can select for upcoming promotional campaigns. This segment will be set up to exclude subscribers who have paused their messages.
- Tease your upcoming promotion in a campaign and offer up the pause option. We offer some great copy examples below.
Create a Pause-Related Keyword
- Select Acquisition in the side menu of your Postscript dashboard, then select Keywords.
- Select Create Keyword in the top-right corner of the page.
- Name your keyword.
- Under the Include Coupon in Reply, select No.
- You can absolutely choose Yes if you want to include a coupon in the pause confirmation that they can use any time during their break.
- Select Save Keyword.
- To add a keyword reply that confirms the pause, select +Add Action then Reply.
- Create your Reply Message.
- Consider using tags, such as {first_name} to address the subscriber personally.
- Confirm their pause and let them know when they'll hear from you again.
- Select Save Action.
Create a Paused Subscriber Segment
With a Paused Subscriber segment, you can ensure to capture subscribers who opted out of receiving your SMS promotions so that you can exclude them in campaign flows.
Below, we walk through how to create a segment that only targets paused subscribers and how to exclude that segment in campaign flows.
- Select Messaging in the side menu of your Postscript dashboard, then select Segments.
- Select Create Segment in the top-right corner of the page.
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Name your segment.
- You can choose to include the specific keyword or the promotion they're opting out of if it helps you better identify the segment when creating a campaign.
- Under Segment Criteria, select Keyword Triggered.
- Select Includes as your refinement criteria.
- In the final drop-down, select your pause-related keyword.
- Select Save Segment.
In this section, we'll walk you through how to exclude a segment in a campaign flow send.
- Select Messaging in the side menu of your Postscript dashboard, then select Campaigns.
- Choose an existing campaign or create a new campaign flow by selecting Create Campaign in the upper-right corner.
- If creating a new campaign, choose Create Campaign Flow. Then choose if you'd like to Use a campaign template or Create a new campaign. Select Continue.
- Within the Campaign Properties card, select the Exclude subscribers in (optional) dropdown and choose the segment you created that included all paused subscribers.
- Adjust all other campaign properties as needed (i.e. add a cancellation trigger and a target segment), then select Save.
Send Pause Option to Subscribers
Once you have created your pause-related keyword, it's time to present the option to your subscribers. You can incorporate this in any campaign you send leading into your promotion window.
Below are some holiday-related examples to highlight how you can still have fun or incorporate your voice brand while presenting the pause option:
- We’ll be sending out holiday flash sales all month long. If you’d like to pass on these messages, just let us know. Reply ‘NAUGHTY’ and we’ll add you to that list 😉
- Our holiday gift guides are about to go live, along with a month of flash sales. Want to opt out of these messages? Simply reply GRINCH and we’ll leave you alone until after Christmas. 🎄
- We know that for some people, the holidays are hard. If you’d like to opt out of our holiday campaigns, we completely understand. Simply respond PAUSE and we’ll be back in touch in the new year. Sending you lots of love either way!
Additional Resources
- Interested in viewing specific subscribers within a segment? Learn how here.
- Need a response-management hack? We've got you covered with our topic and sentiment labels for subscriber responses.
- Did you know you can forward subscriber responses to your email or Helpdesk? Here's how!
Get Support
Have questions? Please feel free to reach out to our wonderful Support team at support@postscript.io or via live chat. You can also submit a support request here!
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