Email consent categories reference
This page describes the email consent categories MapleGather uses and what each one controls.
Marketing categories
Section titled “Marketing categories”Members can opt in or out of each marketing category from their email preferences. Admins can view and update these on a member’s behalf from the member’s Email preferences tab.
| Category key | Display name | When a member is opted in |
|---|---|---|
newsletter |
Newsletter | Receives your organization’s newsletter and general announcements |
event_invitations |
Event invitations | Receives emails about upcoming events |
donation_appeals |
Donation appeals | Receives fundraising and donation request emails |
chapter_updates |
Chapter updates | Receives news and updates specific to their chapter or local group |
The category set shown in the member portal and in admin views is driven by your organization’s active categories — it may differ if your organization has a different category configuration.
Transactional category
Section titled “Transactional category”Transactional emails always send, regardless of a member’s marketing preferences. Members can’t opt out of them. A template’s Transactional class doesn’t change this for email you write yourself: a broadcast, an event’s post-event follow-up, a message to an event’s attendees or an event cancellation notice you write your own message for always skips members who opted out and counts toward your organization’s monthly sending limit, whichever template it uses. (Cancel an event without a custom message and the standard cancellation notice reaches everyone.) The one exception is the claim-account email after a migration: it ignores opt-outs, even when you write its wording, because it’s how imported members claim their account. It still isn’t sent to members who were erased or archived, who have no email address, or who have already claimed their account.
| Category | Examples | Opt-out possible? |
|---|---|---|
| Transactional | Payment receipts, membership activation, application approval or decline, lapse notices, password resets | No — always sends |
Renewal reminders
Section titled “Renewal reminders”Renewal reminders are technically transactional (sent to all members by default). There is no member control to turn renewal reminders off in the portal (Story 2.5.4). An unsubscribe recorded through the API or the catch-up email is honoured only while the level respects member preferences (the default).
Consent event types
Section titled “Consent event types”The consent history on a member’s Email preferences tab records these event types:
| Event type | What it means |
|---|---|
| Opted in | The member (or admin on their behalf) enabled a category (includes updates to an existing opt-in) |
| Opted out | The member (or admin on their behalf) disabled a category (includes updates to an existing opt-out) |
| Double opt-in pending | A confirmation email was sent; the member hasn’t clicked the link yet |
| Double opt-in confirmed | The member clicked a confirmation link to verify their email consent |
Note: “Send suppressed” describes a per-recipient delivery outcome (a member was excluded from a specific send because they were opted out) — it is not a consent-log event type. It appears in the per-recipient delivery report, not the consent history. Corrections to consent are recorded as new consent rows rather than a distinct “Correction” event type.