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Subscriptions let you control who hears from you, on which channels, and about what. This article walks through how Maestra models customer subscriptions, the states a subscription can be in, how filters work, and how all of it ties into the campaigns you send.

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The building blocks

Maestra’s subscription system is built around three concepts:
  • Communication channel (point of contact) — the channel you can reach a customer on, like email, SMS, Viber, mobile push, or web push.
  • Mailing topic — the category of content a customer can subscribe to or unsubscribe from (for example, weekly digests, product updates, or promotions).
  • Opt-in confirmation — the option to send introductory emails to people who haven’t yet explicitly said they want to receive your campaigns.
For each customer, Maestra stores both global subscription states (for the brand overall and for each channel within the brand) and per-topic states on each channel. That granularity lets you communicate more precisely.
A customer can be subscribed to a channel but unsubscribed from some of its topics. In that case, they’ll only receive campaigns for the topics they still want.

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Subscription states

A customer’s subscription can be in one of four states:
  • Subscribed — the customer has agreed to receive marketing campaigns.
  • Unsubscribed — the customer has opted out.
  • Requires confirmation — the subscription status is unclear, and you can send an opt-in campaign to confirm it. This state appears when the Subscription confirmation setting is turned on.
  • No data — there’s no information about the subscription state.

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Explicit and implicit subscriptions

If a subscription was set directly on a specific channel or topic, it’s considered explicit. If it was calculated automatically based on a subscription at a higher level (for example, a brand-level subscription propagating down to a channel), it’s considered implicit. The Maestra UI labels these subscriptions accordingly. The type of subscription affects how it changes when the customer’s status is updated.

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Filtering customers by subscription

To pull customers by their subscription state, use the subscription filter. The filter mirrors the subscription tree: you can narrow down by channel, topic, and — on multi-brand projects — by brand. A few things to know about the filter:
  • To check the global subscription, set the filter without specifying any channels.
  • To check the channel-level subscription, set the filter without specifying any topics.
  • “Subscribed to anything” means the customer is subscribed to the selected channel or to at least one topic within it.
  • You can search specifically for customers with no subscription data at all in the brand.
Need to find customers with no data on a specific topic? Build a segment that includes everyone who does have data for that topic, then exclude that segment from your audience.

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How subscriptions apply to campaigns

In standard campaigns, recipients must be subscribed to the campaign’s channel — and to the selected topic, if one is set. For example, a campaign sent to the Digests topic in the Email channel will only go to customers who are subscribed to digests on email. A few exceptions to keep in mind:
  • Transactional automated campaigns ignore subscription state. This profile is meant for messages a customer must receive — like a pickup-ready notification for an order — not for promotional content.
  • Opt-in confirmation campaigns are sent to customers whose subscription state is Requires confirmation.
Always follow applicable privacy laws (such as GDPR and CCPA) when collecting and processing subscription data. Use transactional campaigns only for genuinely transactional messages — sending marketing content through that profile can violate consent requirements.