Customizing your unsubscribe settings lets you control exactly what respondents see when they choose to leave your community. Instead of a static page, they see a branded chat conversation with your own messaging, your own reason options, and your own button text, whether they unsubscribe from an email or from within a chat.
Settings are configured per locale and inherit your existing chat branding, so there is no separate branding setup to do. Follow the steps below to set up and manage your unsubscribe experience.
1. Accessing Unsubscribe Settings
Go to the Settings tab on the Rival platform.
In the left navigation, select Brand.
Select the Unsubscribe tab, the last tab in the row after Chat Actions.
The preview panel on the right shows the respondent experience and updates as you edit. Use the View on Desktop link at any time to see a full screen preview on a desktop device.
đ Note: The unsubscribe experience uses your existing chat brand settings, including colours and images. You do not need to set up branding separately for this tab.
2. Understanding the Chat Conversation Format
The unsubscribe experience is rendered as a chat conversation, not a form. Each message field you fill in becomes its own chat bubble from your brand, shown in order. Reason checkboxes and the action buttons appear inside the conversation, and when a respondent makes a choice it appears as a reply bubble on their side.
This is why the fields are named message 1 and message 2 rather than title and body. Each one is a separate bubble in the conversation.
3. Writing the Unsubscribe Messages
Expand the Web unsubscribe flow section. The fields appear in the order respondents will encounter them.
Complete the following fields:
Field | Description |
Unsubscribe message 1 | Single line of text and the first bubble a respondent sees. Default: "We're sad to see you go!" |
Unsubscribe message 2 | The second bubble, carrying the substance of your message. Rich text, supporting bold, italic, underline, lists, and inline hyperlinks. Line breaks and paragraph spacing are preserved as typed. |
Use hyperlinks to point respondents to a preference centre, privacy page, or anywhere else on your site. Links are inserted inline within the message text rather than as a separate button.
Use the Insert placeholder dropdown to add dynamic values. Placeholders appear as inline chips and are replaced with real values when the message is delivered:
Placeholder | Inserts |
Participant contact address | The email address the invitation was sent to. |
Branded participant facing name | Your community's participant-facing name, from the General tab. |
đ Tip: Always insert placeholders from the dropdown rather than typing them by hand, so the token is recognized correctly. In the preview panel, placeholders are shown as their literal tokens rather than sample values, making it clear where a dynamic value will be inserted at runtime.
4. Setting Up Your Unsubscribe Reasons
The Unsubscribe reasons table controls the checkboxes respondents choose from when they unsubscribe. The order you set here is the order respondents see.
Every locale starts with a standard set of reasons covering the most common cases: too many survey invitations, surveys take too long, the rewards aren't worth my time, the topics aren't relevant to me, I keep getting screened out, privacy or data concerns, I am no longer a customer, I never signed up for this, and Other (Specify).
Click Add Reason to add a new row. New reasons are added above the Other (Specify) row.
Click the text of any row to edit it inline. Empty values cannot be saved.
Use the delete action on a row to remove it. You will be asked to confirm.
Drag a row by its handle to reorder it.
The Other (Specify) row behaves differently from the rest of the list:
It is anchored to the bottom and marked with an anchor icon. It has no drag handle, it cannot be deleted, and no other reason can be dragged below it.
Its label text is editable, so you can localize it or reword it for your community.
Use the reset icon to restore the label to the default for that locale.
Use the toggle to control whether respondents see the option at all. When on, respondents see it as the last option, and selecting it reveals a required "Tell us more" free-text field. When off, respondents only see the reasons you configured, and the row stays visible to you in the table but is visually de-emphasized.
đ Note: Editing or deleting a reason never changes data that has already been collected. Reasons recorded against existing participants stay exactly as captured, even if you later rename or remove the option.
5. Customizing the Button Text
In the Unsubscribe button text section, set the following:
Field | Default |
Stay subscribed button text | "Stay subscribed" |
Unsubscribe button text | "Unsubscribe" |
Use Reset values to default at any time to restore both fields to the defaults for the locale you are editing.
6. Writing the Confirmation Messages
Two sets of confirmation messages close the conversation, depending on what the respondent chooses.
Field | Shown when |
Unsubscribe confirmation message 1 and message 2 | After a respondent completes an unsubscribe. The defaults confirm the removal and thank them for their feedback. |
Stay subscribed confirmation message 1 and Stay subscribed message 2 | After a respondent clicks Stay subscribed. The defaults reassure them that invitations will continue. |
Both message 2 fields are rich text and support placeholders, so you can confirm exactly which address was removed.
7. Localizing Your Unsubscribe Settings
Every field on the Unsubscribe tab is configurable per locale, using the same locale profile sidebar as the rest of Brand settings.
Select a locale in the Locale Profiles sidebar on the left. The settings fields and the preview panel both switch to that locale's values.
The first time you select a locale, every field is populated with that locale's translation from Rival's built-in catalog. Selecting French (Canada) for the first time pre-fills the first message with "Nous sommes tristes de vous voir partir", the reason list with its French translations, and so on.
These are starting points, not fixed values. Edit anything you want to reword or adapt for your brand, then click Apply Changes to save your overrides for that locale.
Unsaved edits are preserved while you move between locales. Nothing is lost until you click Revert or Apply Changes.
đ Note: If you have not created the locale yet, add it first. See How to create a new brand locale.
8. Previewing and Applying Your Changes
Use the preview panel on the right throughout your session to check your copy in real time. It is interactive, so you can click Unsubscribe or Stay subscribed to walk through to the confirmation bubbles, and Reset to return to the start.
Every field on the Unsubscribe tab is mandatory. Apply Changes stays disabled while any field is blank. Hover or focus the disabled button to see which fields still need values.
Validation is applied per locale. If one locale has an empty field, saving is blocked for that locale only. Your other locales are unaffected.
When you are satisfied, click Apply Changes in the top-right corner. Use Revert to discard everything since your last save.
đ Note: If your community existed before this feature launched, every locale has already been filled with default copy, the default reason list, and default button text. The feature works immediately, so edit only what you want to change.
9. Reporting on Unsubscribes
Every unsubscribe is recorded against the participant with two system attributes, available in the Participants Directory for filtering, segmenting, and export.
Go to Community > Attributes > System Attributes. Both attributes appear alongside existing system attributes such as Subscription status.
The attributes record the following:
Attribute | Description |
Unsubscribe reason | Text. The reason or reasons the participant gave. A single reason shows as-is; several reasons show comma-separated and truncated in the cell if long; Other (Specify) shows the text the respondent typed. |
Unsubscribe source | Single choice: Chat, Email, or One-click email. Email means the respondent completed the unsubscribe page from an email link. One-click email means they used the one-click link in their email client's header bar, which unsubscribes them instantly without capturing a reason. |
For subscribed and purged participants, both cells show a dash.
Both attributes appear as columns in the Participants Directory, can be filtered and sorted like any other system attribute, are available in segment and filter builders, and are included in the standard Exports flow.
Both attributes are read-only. They are set automatically when an unsubscribe occurs and cannot be edited.
đ Activity log: Every unsubscribe and stay-subscribed event is logged with the participant ID, event type, source, reason text, locale, and a UTC timestamp.
â You're all set! Your unsubscribe experience now reflects your brand and captures why participants are leaving, across every locale you have configured.