Online form for people (contacts) to subscribe (e.g. for newsletters) [1848]

• 07-01-2009, 10:54 AM

  13371

  B.Nicolle Joined about 4 years ago Posts 22

  Online form for people (contacts) to subscribe (e.g. for newsletters) [1848] I like the Contacts feature. I am almost at the point of importing my non-member mailing list into WA and using this as our sole database. However I do not believe that there is a way to set up a "Contact" form so people who visit the site can sign up to receive emails from us without actually becoming a member. This would seem to be a logical addition. Anyone else that fills out any kind of form or event registration, or who I choose to add manually, can be a contact, so why not someone who adds themselves? This feature would complete the picture for us - a one-stop system. Thanks

  Report abuse

• 11-11-2009, 3:32 PM

  15088 in reply to 13371

  Chief_Apricot Joined about 5 years ago Toronto Posts 4,184	Re: Contacts Sign-Up Form This does make total sense, will add to our queue Dmitry Buterin, Chief Apricot
  	Report abuse

• 01-08-2010, 10:52 AM

  16008 in reply to 13371

  Anonymous	Re: Contacts Sign-Up Form [1848] We've designated this issue as one of Top 50 for the year. That means we plan to develop it in 2010. As always, this thread will be updated if we have any questions about how people would like to use this service, and also to let you know when we have a release date for it. Suggestions and use cases are welcome, as always!

• 01-22-2010, 1:05 AM

  16302 in reply to 16008

  James Kerich Joined about 3 years ago Posts 80

  Re: Contacts Sign-Up Form [1848] We would like this feature as well.  How we'd like to use this is to have a special "contact" setup for this type of contact.  For instance, we set up our "contact" fields now to include name, company, address and phone because these contacts are generally signing up for an event and we want to contact them later using the contact field database instead of the event field database.  I believe your design will not allow a contact to exist without e-mail, first and last name so we have no ability to have an e-mail only contact at all anyway. For someone who wants a "newsletter" e-mail, we would need a special type of contact that will only provide their e-mail address and nothing else.  This setup would violate your current design and maybe this function would require a whole new contact type.  Not sure of the best solution, but I believe we would need e-mail contacts to be a whole new functional area.

  Report abuse

• 01-22-2010, 8:44 AM

  16310 in reply to 16302

  Chief_Apricot Joined about 5 years ago Toronto Posts 4,184	Re: Contacts Sign-Up Form [1848] Thanks James, we are working on a design of this feature now and your comment is very useful and timely. Dmitry Buterin, Chief Apricot
  	Report abuse

• 01-25-2010, 3:33 PM

  16376 in reply to 16310

  Paul at PEN Joined about 3 years ago Posts 126

  Re: Contacts Sign-Up Form [1848] Another problem with how this currently works is that I can target mail to all contacts, including those who went to an event or made a donation but never agreed to be on a mailing list, or else I can exclude everyone who ever went to an event or made a donation... but there's really no separate mailing list functionality. It seems like the a mailing list is something that cuts across all membership levels and contact categories. One way of managing this would be to allow contacts to participate in Groups, and have your mailing list set up as a group. It would also be necessary to have membership levels subscribed (or not) to certain groups by default.

  Report abuse

• 01-25-2010, 4:07 PM

  16380 in reply to 16376

  Chief_Apricot Joined about 5 years ago Toronto Posts 4,184	Re: Contacts Sign-Up Form [1848] We did consider mailing list as part of this but concluded that we are better off focusing this feature on simple subscription form - and deal with mailing list as a separate thing. I will ask my colleague if he already created one - he will post an update here. Dmitry Buterin, Chief Apricot
  	Report abuse

• 01-25-2010, 5:06 PM

  16387 in reply to 16380

  Paul at PEN Joined about 3 years ago Posts 126	Re: Contacts Sign-Up Form [1848] Sorry, I don't understand -- what's the subscription form for, if not a mailing list?
  	Report abuse

• 01-25-2010, 8:54 PM

  16390 in reply to 16387

  Chief_Apricot Joined about 5 years ago Toronto Posts 4,184

  Re: Contacts Sign-Up Form [1848] Sorry I should have been more precise. You are right that basically the subscription form is for the mailing list. What I meant is that our current thinking is not to look for the simplest possible first step solution and thus not to consider aspects of multiple mailing lists, their settings, privacy aspects etc. Basically subscription form will create a contact record upon submission. Does this make sense? Dmitry Buterin, Chief Apricot

  Report abuse

• 01-27-2010, 3:25 PM

  16425 in reply to 16390

  Paul at PEN Joined about 3 years ago Posts 126	Re: Contacts Sign-Up Form [1848] Yes, thanks. But would it be a special kind of contact? You can't use your general contacts list as a mailing list--it includes donors and event attendees who never agreed to be on it.
  	Report abuse

• 01-29-2010, 2:47 PM

  16485 in reply to 16425

  Anonymous

  Re: Contacts Sign-Up Form [1848] Hi Paul: First of all, we do have a feature in analysis for mailing lists, but I have not created a forum topic for it yet. I will collect our notes and do so. Secondly, we are designing the form so that when someone signs up they will have the ability to indicate if they want to receive emails for event notifications and/or general email blasts. As for your other donors or contacts who do not wish to receive emails, you can go into their contact cards and remove their ability to receive emails under their "Email subscriptions" tab.

• 02-02-2010, 4:55 PM

  16583 in reply to 16485

  Paul at PEN Joined about 3 years ago Posts 126

  Re: Contacts Sign-Up Form [1848] Hi Giuliano, The problem with this scenario is that donors and event attendees are not given subscription opt-ins when they donate or register, so we cannot, under any circumstances, use the contacts list as a mailing list. I just don't see how having people sign up to be contacts would be useful. It would be a case of "Sign up to be in our database, but we'll never be able to email you, because we have no way of separating you out from all the people who it would be unethical for us to mail." If donors and event attendees were given subscription opt-ins, there is the problem that once someone chooses not to be subscribed to blasts, we have no way of contacting them through WA--they wouldn't even receive notices about the event they just signed up for. Sorry for harping on this, but I've been waiting for mailing list functionality for a long time and it seems like one of the basic functions WA should have. I thought the contacts system was intended to create it. I'd hate to see your development time go into another piece that doesn't really solve the problem either. Regards, Paul

  Report abuse

• 02-03-2010, 10:30 AM

  16600 in reply to 16583

  Anonymous

  Re: Contacts Sign-Up Form [1848] Paul: I understand now. Sorry for the confusion. What you'd like to see, if I understand correctly, is similar to the ability we offering on the contact sign up form for contacts to add themselves to the mailing lists, but have it also on the donation form and event registration. This makes perfect sense to me. I could see the ability to add a field to donation form or event registrations that captured subscription information similar to how I've described it in the story above. I'll check to see if we have an issue recorded for this. Thanks!

• 02-04-2010, 2:10 PM

  16642 in reply to 16600

  Paul at PEN Joined about 3 years ago Posts 126

  Re: Contacts Sign-Up Form [1848] Sorry, no, that still leaves one problem, and it is a general problem with WA e-mail subscriptions: when someone unsubscribes from e-mail blasts, we are no longer able to contact them through WA. So someone could sign up for an event, see the subscription options and choose not to receive our newsletters, and they would then receive no emails we send, not even updates about the event they just signed up for.  It seems like there should be a third type of subscription option to distinguish between general blasts and important, targeted information. If that's not implemented, I wouldn't want event attendees to be given subscription options because it would make it impossible for us to communicate with them.

  Report abuse

• 02-08-2010, 12:05 PM

  16799 in reply to 16642

  sfroach Joined about 2 years ago Posts 1

  Re: Contacts Sign-Up Form [1848] The limited WA functionality regarding this issue is a major shortcoming of WA.  I just set up a WA site for my local chapter of a world wide professional organization.  At the local chapter level, we have paid members of the worldwide organization & Interested Public (not paid members, but who want to receive communications on local chapter events and pay for their attendance at some events). Do to WA current limitations, I was forced to import both the ‘paid world wide/local members’ records and the ‘Interested Public ‘records as members of the WA site.  This situation leads to much confusion as to who is a paid ‘member’ of the world wide/local organization vs who is a ‘member’ of the WA site. I looking forward to this issue being addred & the resulting increased functionality. Thanks, Steve

  Report abuse

• 02-08-2010, 12:23 PM

  16801 in reply to 16799

  Chief_Apricot Joined about 5 years ago Toronto Posts 4,184	Re: Contacts Sign-Up Form [1848] Steve, Can you elaborate? On the face of it  I would simply use different membership levels and/or simply imported some people as contacts (not members) to solve this. Dmitry Buterin, Chief Apricot
  	Report abuse

• 03-17-2010, 3:30 PM

  17435 in reply to 16801

  Melissa Roberts Joined about 1 year ago Tennessee Posts 2	Contact Group We would like to be able to allow non-members to sign-up as a 'contact' allowing us to send eblasts and newsletters to them. We have been adding contacts manually but it would be nice to have an area on our website where people can sign up for this option themselves. Melissa Roberts
  	Report abuse

• 03-18-2010, 6:13 AM

  17442 in reply to 16801

  iant Joined about 2 years ago UK Posts 131	Re: Contact Group We achieve exactly this by having a free membership level and restricting what information is displayed in the member directory. Regards Ian Worthing and adur chamber of commerce
  	Report abuse

• 04-22-2010, 8:54 PM

  17907 in reply to 17442

  Socokoi Joined about 2 years ago Posts 12

  Re: Contact Group Just found this thread - we have contacts that are not members of the club but do wish to advertise in our newsletter.  I would like them to be able to sign up as contacts and pay their advertising fees through our website, be able to add them to our newsletter and/or email blasts, but not allow them access to the members only section.   As it is now, I had to set up a separate "donation" form for them, and tho they can sign themselves up without becoming a member, I cannot edit the donation/contact form the way I want to -

  Report abuse

• 04-22-2010, 11:24 PM

  17911 in reply to 13371

  delfstrom Joined about 1 year ago Toronto Posts 4

  Re: Accepting email newsletter subscriptions online [1848] Absolutely! We need the ability for web visitors to add themselves to our Contacts without becoming "members". This is very important as members have rights and privileges in our organization by-laws. Right now the terminology is confusing. Someone who just wants to subscribe to an email newsletter should not be told they are a member of the organization! Until this is available, I will need to set up a web based form on a different subdomain with a different webhost to collect the info, and then periodically import the sign-ups into the contacts database through the administrator panel.

  Report abuse

• 04-23-2010, 8:18 AM

  17915 in reply to 17907

  Chief_Apricot Joined about 5 years ago Toronto Posts 4,184	Re: Contact Group @socokoi - consider setting those up as a separate membership level instead - and not giving that level access to members-only section.  Dmitry Buterin, Chief Apricot
  	Report abuse

• 08-09-2010, 1:59 PM

  19164 in reply to 17915

  AKA TEO Joined about 1 year ago Posts 5

  Re: Contact Group Hi, this would also satisfy all of my requirements for my non-profit website.  I would like to add Contacts without them becoming a member of my site, which is confusing because they are not members of the organization.  I would simply like to collect the email address (nothing else) for people who visit my site.  Their e-mail addresses would be used to send event notifications and newsletters.  The subscription box should have an unsubscribe link as well for people who decide they no longer want to receive our event notifications and newsletters.  I've been researching companies like Constant Contact.  Could I integrate their e-mail subscription box into WA?  Is there another company you would recommend?  Constant Contact isn't ideal because it's not a free service and we have limited funds.  Maybe you could send me a javascript or html code that would do the trick?

  Report abuse

• 08-09-2010, 2:51 PM

  19166 in reply to 19164

  Chief_Apricot Joined about 5 years ago Toronto Posts 4,184

  Re: Contact Group This feature is likely to go into development in our next release 4.1 (after we launch version 4.0 in September) Yes, you can integrated a subscription form from other system like Constant Contact into your Wild Apricot website - to do this you need to get the HTML code directly from them. Note that when yo do this, contacts are added to another database (whatever system you use) and not your Wild Apricot database.  Dmitry Buterin, Chief Apricot

  Report abuse

• 01-14-2011, 1:33 PM

  21150 in reply to 13371

  Chief_Apricot Joined about 5 years ago Toronto Posts 4,184	Re: Online form for people (contacts) to subscribe (e.g. for newsletters) [1848] Released in 4.1  Dmitry Buterin, Chief Apricot
  	Report abuse