Sitecore 9.1+ Marketing Category Subscription: Part 1

An article series by Dirk Schäfauer.

As I wrote in my previous blog post An introductory series to Marketing Category Subscription in Sitecore 9.1+ we need a way to get this to work as the preference center does.

First, you have to understand what Sitecore wants to accomplish and the approach they choose for this:

If you understand that this is a good way to circumvent all the problems to building contact lists which were there before, I think we also should go that way!

Okay, here is the plan:

I want to offer the contact the possibility to subscribe to marketing categories which can be attached to a manager root
I want to use a global contact list as a base for all the segmented lists to filter the contacts
I want to use Double-Opt-In because of GDPR!
I want a Sitecore Forms backend where I can select Manager Roots and the global contact list
If any double-opt-in setting is "true" the form should have the ability to get the manager root and a contact list where the contact will be subscribed to, otherwise the contact saves it's preferences every time.
I want the possibility to identify the contact to have a similar behavior like the link in an email to the preference center
I want to identify the contact and select it's preferences in the form
I want a form that reacts on the behaviors of a known contact with conditions and security concerns
Create the form that looks likes the (customized) preference center, regarding the conditions
I want to have my own Javascript magic in a form (maybe not necessary if you are tricky ;))
Security should be always ensured, because no one should have the option to change another ones preferences by entering an email address
Now: Jump from the bridge!!!

Okay, requirements, even those of myself, are usually exhausting!
But do not fool yourself, even the requirements of customers can sometimes degenerate.

There are many things to do. I am still sad that Sitecore does not have its own solution ... or are they waiting for me? 😁

Let's dive deeper in Part 2 – Custom Field to get the Marketing Preferences and the ContactList".

Happy concepting
Dirk