Consent and unsubscribe

Caramel tracks marketing consent at the customer level and respects unsubscribes across channels. Customers who opt out stop receiving messages from the affected channel without any manual action on your part.

How consent is collected

Consent is collected at the point a customer engages with your business — typically through a form. If your form includes a marketing opt-in checkbox, submitting the form records that consent for the customer’s profile.

To add a consent field to a form, open the form builder and add a Checkbox field. Label it clearly (for example, “I agree to receive marketing emails”). See Create a form for more on building forms.

Important Caramel does not send marketing messages to contacts who have not given consent. Only customers who have opted in, or who have been explicitly added to your customer list, receive journey and broadcast messages.

Subscription preferences

Customers can manage their channel preferences — for example, opting into Email but not SMS. Caramel groups messages by communication type (Welcome, Promotions, Re-engagement, and so on). Customers can opt out of a specific type without unsubscribing from all communications.

Subscription preferences are stored per customer. You can view them on a customer’s record under Customers → [customer name] → Preferences.

Unsubscribes

When a customer clicks an unsubscribe link in a message:

1. Their opt-out is recorded immediately.
2. They stop receiving messages of that communication type on that channel.
3. The unsubscribe is reflected in analytics as an Unsubscribe event.

Note Unsubscribe links are included automatically in all Email messages. SMS unsubscribes use a reply keyword (typically STOP). WhatsApp and Telegram follow each channel’s opt-out rules.

Resubscription

A customer who has unsubscribed can opt back in by submitting a form with a consent checkbox, or by taking an explicit resubscription action. You cannot manually override an unsubscribe from the Caramel dashboard.

Compliance

Marketing messages are sent only to opted-in contacts. Caramel does not bypass opt-out status or re-enroll unsubscribed contacts automatically. For regulated industries (healthcare, financial services, and others), review your local requirements for additional consent disclosures beyond what Caramel captures by default.

Next steps

• Channels — configure the channels your messages are sent through.
• Customers — view consent status and preferences per contact.
• Journeys — set up the automations that send to opted-in customers.