Unsubscribe Attribute and preference page opt out

I also suggest using 2 different fields to track Optin and opt out. In you case opt out field is "Unsubscribed" field. In case you are also capturing optins for other categories like "Events" "Newsletter" etc. It's beneficial to use 2 separate optin and opt out fields for same. Like Event optin and Event Opt out.

To add to what Sanford has said - my personal experience is that you have to basically ignore the "Unsubscribed" figure in Marketo reports once you are using different unsubscribe processes. Those reports aren't able to know what your custom unsubscribe field is, and what it should contain. Annoying.

One thing to watch out for: if someone unsubscribes from your emails through the list-unsubscribe headers in Gmail or similar, this will change the default Unsubscribed value to be True. This wouldn't automatically change your other unsubscribe field, so I would create a smart campaign that looks for the Unsubscribed field changing to True where your custom unsubscribed field is False.

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I have noticed that when we send out an email blast that the unsubscribes are not being recognised in the Summary of the program.

Do they need to be added as a member of the Program with a Status from a trigger to collect this information?

Is this looking at the Unsubscribe attribute?

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Yes, it's looking at the system Unsubscribed  (with a d at the end) field.

All Marketo built-in reports/behaviors that refer to "unsubscribes" refer to the system field. You can have custom fields and logic for your preference center, and (attempt to) exclude the same people using Smart List filters, but it's only the Unsubscribed field that's used automatically.

The Unsubscribed value is also remembered, even if the email address is deleted and re-added to the system, which is called Durable Unsubscribe. This won't happen automatically with your custom fields.