Blacklisting and Whitelisting
The blacklisting and whitelisting function in the Office24by7 platform lets you gain complete control over your campaign message recipients. These features allow you to manage who receives your communications and who is excluded. For instance, during a sales or marketing campaign, you can blacklist certain uninterested contacts, leads, or customers to ensure they do not receive messages. Whitelisting ensures that key recipients always receive your communications.
Let’s explore the blacklisting and whitelisting functions in detail.
What is Blacklisting and Whitelisting?
Blacklisting refers to the process of excluding specific contacts from receiving your campaign messages. These can be your leads, deals, customers, or whoever you’re sending campaign messages to. This function ensures that individuals who are uninterested, unresponsive, or otherwise should not be contacted are omitted from your communication efforts. This can enhance the relevance and compliance of your campaigns.
Whitelisting is the process of removing specific contacts from the blacklist to ensure that they always receive your campaign messages. Whitelisting individuals can ensure that they are included in your communications from that point onwards. This enhances the effectiveness and targeting of your campaigns.
Purpose of Blacklisting and Whitelisting
Business organizations often need to run certain campaigns to elevate their sales and marketing efforts. This helps them grow their lead database, sales output, and revenue. Such bulk campaigns have now become an inevitable part of business communication. However, from a customer’s perspective, it might be too hectic for them as they might be receiving messages from a lot of business organizations every day. Some of them might even consider this communication as spam.
There are several reasons why customers opt to be blacklisted from sales or marketing campaign messages. Some of these include:
- Preference for privacy
- Irrelevancy of content
- High frequency of messages
- Past negative experiences
- Information overload
- Unwanted solicitation
- Lack of interest
- Data security concerns
- Preference for other channels
- Avoidance of spam
This functionality can help you tailor your outreach efforts and enhance compliance with contact preferences.
Now let’s take a look at how to blacklist contacts in various channels of communication in the Office24by7 platform.
Email Blacklisting
Let’s take a look at how to block email IDs of contacts who shouldn’t be reached over email campaigns.
Step 1: Click the campaigns icon from the menu on the left side of the panel. This will open a menu bar with the following options: ‘Email’, ‘SMS’, ‘WhatsApp’, ‘Push Notifications’, and ‘Voice Broadcasting’. Click ‘Email’.
Step 2: From the list of sub-menus that appear, select ‘Blocked Emails’. This will open up a table containing information regarding all the email IDs that have been blocked for email campaigns.
Step 3: On the top of the table, you can find two fields:
- a field to enter the email ID to be blocked.
- a field to upload a file.
You can either enter the email ID in that field manually or upload a file from your system containing all email IDs to be blocked. After you enter the specific email ID or upload the file, click the ‘Add’ button.
NB: The size of the file you upload should not exceed 30 MB.
You have successfully blacklisted the preferred email IDs.
To whitelist the emails which are added to the blacklist, simply click the ‘Delete’ button against them.
SMS Blacklisting
Let’s take a look at how to block phone numbers of contacts who shouldn’t be reached over SMS campaigns.
Step 1: Click the campaigns icon from the menu on the left side of the panel. This will open a menu bar with the following options: ‘Email’, ‘SMS’, ‘WhatsApp’, ‘Push Notifications’, and ‘Voice Broadcasting’. Click ‘SMS’.
Step 2: From the list of sub-menus that appear, select ‘Blocked Numbers’. This will open up a table containing information regarding all the phone numbers that have been blocked for SMS campaigns.
Step 3: On the top of the table, you can find two fields:
- a field to enter the phone number to be blocked.
- a field to upload a file.
You can either enter the phone number in that field manually or upload a file from your system containing all phone numbers to be blocked. After you enter the specific phone number or upload the file, click the ‘Add’ button.
NB: The size of the file you upload should not exceed 30 MB.
You have successfully blacklisted the preferred contact numbers.
To whitelist the phone numbers which are added to the blacklist, simply click the ‘Delete’ button against them.
WhatsApp Blacklisting
Let’s take a look at how to block the phone numbers of contacts who shouldn’t be reached over WhatsApp campaigns.
Step 1: Click the campaigns icon from the menu on the left side of the panel. This will open a menu bar with the following options: ‘Email’, ‘SMS’, ‘WhatsApp’, ‘Push Notifications’, and ‘Voice Broadcasting’. Click ‘WhatsApp’.
Step 2: From the list of sub-menus that appear, select ‘Blocked Numbers’. This will open up a table containing information regarding all the phone numbers that have been blocked for WhatsApp campaigns.
Step 3: On the top of the table, you can find two fields:
- a field to enter the phone number to be blocked.
- a field to upload a file.
You can either enter the phone number in that field manually or upload a file from your system containing all phone numbers to be blocked. After you enter the specific phone number or upload the file, click the ‘Add’ button.
NB: The size of the file you upload should not exceed 30 MB.
You have successfully blacklisted the preferred contact numbers.
To whitelist the phone numbers which are added to the blacklist, simply click the ‘Delete’ button against them.
Push Notifications Blacklisting
Let’s take a look at how to block the phone numbers of contacts who shouldn’t be reached over push notification campaigns.
Step 1: Click the campaigns icon from the menu on the left side of the panel. This will open a menu bar with the following options: ‘Email’, ‘SMS’, ‘WhatsApp’, ‘Push Notifications’, and ‘Voice Broadcasting’. Click ‘Push Notifications’.
Step 2: From the list of sub-menus that appear, select ‘Blocked Numbers’. This will open up a table containing information regarding all the phone numbers that have been blocked for push notification campaigns.
Step 3: On the top of the table, you can find two fields:
- a field to enter the phone number to be blocked.
- a field to upload a file.
You can either enter the phone number in that field manually or upload a file from your system containing all phone numbers to be blocked. After you enter the specific phone number or upload the file, click the ‘Add’ button.
NB: The size of the file you upload should not exceed 30 MB.
You have successfully blacklisted the preferred contact numbers.
To whitelist the phone numbers which are added to the blacklist, simply click the ‘Delete’ button against them.
Voice Broadcasting Blacklisting
Let’s take a look at how to block phone numbers of contacts who shouldn’t be reached over voice broadcasting campaigns.
Step 1: Click the campaigns icon from the menu on the left side of the panel. This will open a menu bar with the following options: ‘Email’, ‘SMS’, ‘WhatsApp’, ‘Push Notifications’, and ‘Voice Broadcasting’. Click ‘Voice Broadcasting’.
Step 2: From the list of sub-menus that appear, select ‘Blocked Numbers’. This will open up a table containing information regarding all the phone numbers that have been blocked for voice broadcasting campaigns.
Step 3: On the top of the table, you can find two fields:
- a field to enter the phone number to be blocked.
- a field to upload a file.
You can either enter the phone number in that field manually or upload a file from your system containing all phone numbers to be blocked. After you enter the specific phone number or upload the file, click the ‘Add’ button.
NB: The size of the file you upload should not exceed 30 MB.
You have successfully blacklisted the preferred contact numbers.
To whitelist the phone numbers which are added to the blacklist, simply click the ‘Delete’ button against them.