Custom Subscription Opt-ins & What's Changing with Business Opt-ins

More flexibility with your opt-in strategy and one thing you should know before your next data collection campaign.

TL;DR: We're sunsetting Business Opt-ins and replacing them with Custom-subscription opt-ins. Your existing business opt-ins will be migrated on your behalf, so you don't need to take any action. What this all means in practice:

For some time, subscription management has been a bit inflexible within Tradable Bits. Fans were either globally opted-in, or restricted to opt-ins by business, which meant that you as marketers had more mapping to do, more risk of fans “globally opting out” and an unclear path to create segments of fans just subscribed to one artist or sponsor.

What we’ve heard from you:

• Sometimes you want a fan to be able to opt into just one artist for updates, or
• Just one promotions list (whether that’s presale alerts or ticket deals),
• Or sometimes you want to have a specific opt-in list tied to a commercial partner, or a specific brand moment.

And that’s why we’ve improved subscription/opt-in management within the FanCRM. Now you can create custom subscriptions and define:

• The subscription object/name
• Whether the opt-in applies to email, SMS or both
• Whether opt-ins should be tied to a specific business or idol

What's changing

Previously, opt-ins in Tradable Bits were tied to a Business object or globally account-wide. That worked, but also meant that every sponsor, every artist, every subscription tier needed its own Business in your system before you could create an email or SMS opt-in for it.

Custom opt-ins remove that constraint. You can create opt-ins tied to any Business or Idol in your system - and you can add multiple opt-ins to a single campaign. Think of them like opt-ins to proper subscription lists. This means that instead of using one generic subscribe field, you can let fans opt in and out of something more specific - like home-game ticket updates, or presale alerts, or artist updates.

What happens to your existing data?

We've migrated all historical Business Opt-ins to Custom Subscriptions/Opt-ins automatically. Your lists are intact. The only thing that changes in your day-to-day is where you find and create opt-ins going forward.

1. To create a new subscription: Go to FanCRM > Subscriptions/Opt-ins and click +New Subscription. 

2. To add a subscription/opt-in to a Tradable Bits campaign: In the Entry Form Field Section, click Additional Fields > Subscription Field > then choose which subscription list you want to add as an opt-in. Opt-in language is configurable in localized language as usual.

Why this matters for your downstream:

These new subscription objects give you a cleaner way to collect, map and activate intent. You’ve always known that not every fan is raising their hand for the same thing - and this is our first step in helping you ensure that not every opt-in flows into one giant, unsegmented bucket.

Our hope is that Custom Subscription Opt-ins will help you:

• Collect more specific preferences
• Build cleaner subscriber groups
• Create more relevant follow-up journeys
• Keep your engagement campaigns strategic for what you do with the data next.

Or in plain English, we hope they help you stay targeted and intentional from the start.

What's now possible:

1. If you're a sports team managing multiple subscription tiers: Your setup doesn't change. You still create separate businesses and tie a Custom Opt-in/Subscription to each. The workflow is the same, just more manageable 

2. If you collect opt-ins to commercial sponsors as part of a campaign: You no longer need to create a separate business for each sponsor. Add them as an Idol in Tradable Bits, create a custom opt-in for them, and you're live. Cleaner setup, fewer Business folders to manage, same compliance coverage.
3. If you're a music partner managing artist opt-ins across a roster: Rather than maintaining separate business folders for every artist, add your artists as Idols and create a Custom opt-in for each. Your data collection stays artist-specific without the extra overhead admin.

A few things worth noting:

• These custom subscription opt-ins are separate from global subscription status. So if a fan opts into a custom subscription on a campaign, they’ll be associated with that list - but they’re not marked as globally subscribed unless that global subscription field is also included on the form.

• These subscriptions are searchable in the FanCRM. Once you create a custom subscription object, you can search opt-ins within the FanCRM to segment and create specific audiences.
  
  
• Business Opt-ins are sunset as of April 15, 2026. If you had campaigns using the old Business opt-in field, those have been remapped.

What’s next: We have more improvements on the horizon. Our longer-term goal is to make these subscription objects even more useful across imports and integrations, too - and in the meantime, we’d love to hear your feedback on whether these custom subscription objects help with your existing workflows!