VSys One: Volunteer Management Software

Opt-out/Contact flags

If you send out e-mails to volunteers (and who doesn't?), you should probably include a way for those volunteers to change their communication preferences, e.g. "Stop e-mailing me!"

Setting these up comes in two major parts:

  1. Defining the opt-out/contact flags, and
  2. Including them in your letters.

Creating opt-out/contact flags options

Within each VSys Live site, you can create any number of opt-out/contact flags options.

Description

This is how the link will be displayed in your letters.

Type

Always Contact flags/opt-out.

User code

The code you set here will be part of the link placed in your letters. In this example, the link will be https://demo.VSysLive.com/pages/opt:OPTOUT (but with your VSys Live site's address).

Placeholder page

VSys Live displays this to the user in a page, use this to set a placeholder page that VSys Live can use for that.

Valid contact flags

Which contact flags should the volunteer be able to edit? Only the ones you check here will be visible to the volunteer.

Instructions

Using HTML, describe what this page does to your volunteers. This will be displayed above the opt-out tools when a volunteer clicks the link.

Message to show after updating

After the volunteer successfully changes their preferences, they'll be shown this message.

After updating, send visitor to URL

After the volunteer successfully changes their preferences, they'll be redirected to this page.

Including links in your letters

After creating one or more of these opt-out/contact flags, you can include them in letter templates. Click on Insert... -> System -> Opt-out/contact flags option -> Main Site Opt-out (or the name of your VSys Live site + the name of the option you've created). In your letter template you'll see something like:

What the volunteer sees

In an e-mail, the volunteer will see something like:

The link has the same name as the opt-out/contact flag you created earlier. The link itself is something like: http://demo.vsyslive.com/pages/opt:OPTOUT:DMRQXDGXE5MHV6PM:QOWIB5AI48ZLCZZ3. Which is very ugly. But it contains in it enough information for VSys Live to know what volunteer is being affected, and the letter that sent them here.

Note that anyone who has this link can change a volunteer's communication preferences. That's the trade-off between convenience (a volunteer who doesn't have or remember their login information and really just wants to stop getting e-mails) vs. security (requiring that the volunteer log in to change these preferences). To require that the volunteer log in first, don't use opt-out/contact flags, but instead link to your VSys Live site where the volunteer can log in and update their data using an application form.