The reader preference center

Between "everything" and "unsubscribe" there's a middle ground: let readers choose. Turn it on under your audience's Settings → Reader preference center and every email's footer gains an Email preferences link next to Unsubscribe, opening each reader's own page of checkboxes. Readers who want less mail get somewhere to say so—before they reach for the unsubscribe link, or worse, the spam button.

Two kinds of checkbox can appear on the page. Both are recorded as membership in groups you pick, so the Groups page always shows you who chose what.

Topics—groups readers manage themselves

A topic is a group you put in readers' own hands: your blog list, ARC news, special announcements—even your main newsletter group itself, so readers can step out of the weekly email without leaving everything. Each topic shows as a checkbox, pre-checked when the reader is already in that group. Ticking joins the group; unticking leaves it.

If your campaigns already go out to groups rather than the whole list, topics alone are a complete preference system: a reader who's only in your "New releases" group only ever gets new-release news. No other machinery needed.

Kinds—a floor for wider sends

Under Kinds readers can turn off you can also offer the built-in campaign kinds—Newsletter, New release, Blog post. For each one you offer, word it the way your readers know it and pick a group that records who turned it off (+ New group… creates one right in the dropdown—"No weekly newsletters" works well).

On the reader's page every offered kind starts ticked. A reader who unticks one lands in that group, and campaigns of that kind skip them automatically: the composer gains a small "This is a" choice next to Send to, and the recipient count updates as you change it—the count you confirm is the count that sends. Campaigns count as newsletters unless you say otherwise, and drafts created from your blog feed are marked as blog posts on their own.

Kinds are the safety net for sends aimed wider than one group: whoever a campaign goes to, each reader's choice is honored without you keeping track of anything.

The rules the page lives by

• No choice changes nothing. A reader who never opens the page keeps getting everything, exactly as today—all boxes ticked and never-visited are the same state.
• It's never a gate. The page appears in exactly two places: the footer link, and the unsubscribe page's "get fewer emails instead" offer. Signup never asks.
• Welcome sequences still run. Automations aren't filtered by kind choices—a reader who joins your ARC team gets the ARC welcome emails even with newsletters turned off. (Automated emails carry the preferences link in their footers too.)
• Only named groups are touched. Saving joins or leaves exactly the groups your settings name—nothing else about the reader changes.
• All the way off stays one click. The page links Unsubscribe too, so a reader who means "stop everything" is never trapped in checkboxes.

Linking it in your own words

The footer link is automatic. To invite readers yourself—"tell me what you'd like to hear about"—select some words in the composer, click Link, and use {{preferencesUrl}} as the address: it becomes each reader's own page at send time. And if you write your own footer with {{unsubscribeUrl}}, the automatic footer stands aside—include {{preferencesUrl}} yourself if you want the link there.