Create a Preferences Center

It’s important that your audience want the messages you send. To give your contacts some additional control over which communications they receive from you, create a preferences center where they can opt in or out of interest groups you create.

In this article, you'll learn how to create and publish a preferences center for your contacts.

Before you start

• Preferences centers are currently not available for accounts with GDPR-enabled signup forms or websites created with the classic website builder.
• The preferences center does not include Mailchimp Inbox message permissions.
• After you publish a preferences center, it will replace the update profile form.

How it works

A preferences center is a stand-alone webpage where your contacts can update their profile information and choose their interests based on the groups in your audience. If you only share certain campaigns with certain groups, this helps contacts pick which communications they’ll receive from you.

After you first publish a preferences center, it will permanently replace the update profile form for that audience. This means that all emails with an *|UPDATE_PROFILE|* merge tag will link to the preferences center instead.

Create a preferences center

You'll use Mailchimp’s inline editing tools to design your preferences center.

To create a preferences center, follow these steps.

1. Click the Audience icon.
   
2. Click Preferences center.
   
3. If you have more than one audience, click the Current audience drop-down and choose the one you want to work with.
   
4. Click Start Building.
   

Great work! This will take you to the preferences center builder, where you can customize the content, design, and URL.

Customize and publish your preferences center

Now, you’ll edit the text, and customize the colors, text, and button style.

To customize your preferences center, follow these steps.

1. In the preferences center builder, click the color set icon to pick one of five color sets.
   
2. Click the text icon in the panel to customize the button style and fonts.

3. Click the image icon to upload an image from your computer.
   

   If you want to change the image, hover over it and click Replace to choose a file from the content studio.

4. Click the description text to edit and style it.
   

5. Click Edit fields toggle on or off any optional audience field. If a contact has already interacted with an audience field, you can not toggle it off.
   

6. When you’re done editing, click Publish.

7. On the Publish step choose a URL for your preferences center. You’ll have the option to use a custom domain or a mailchimpsites.com domain.
   
8. Review your layout and URL in the preview window and click Continue when ready.
9. Click Publish.
   

After you publish, your preferences center will replace the update profile page form for your audience. Contacts who click an *|UPDATE_PROFILE|* merge tag link in your emails will be taken to your preferences center instead.

If you need to make additional changes, navigate to the preferences center page in your audience and click Edit.

Next steps

Check out these additional resources to help you maintain an active, up-to-date audience.

Requirements and Best Practices for Audiences
The Importance of Permission