Use this link to share with your colleagues:
All About Email Signup Forms: https://help.pm.leapevent.tech/a/1276578
Your patrons need to use a signup form to opt in to your marketing emails. In this article, we'll cover your options and our best practice recommendations, including:
- How do email signups get into my PatronManager database?
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What signup forms can I use?
- If you're using Emma
- If you're using MailChimp
- How do I use the PatronManager signup form?
- How do I use an Emma signup form?
- How should I capture email preferences?
- or How can my patrons sign up for specific email lists?
How do email signups get into my PatronManager database?
You'll provide your patrons with a signup form they'll use to opt in to your email marketing list; it'll look something like this:
Then, those emails will come in to your Unqualified Contact list, where you and your coworkers will qualify them. Next time you send a marketing email, they'll be able to receive it!
What signup forms can I use?
That depends! Which email marketing system are you using?
- If you have Name Sync turned on: you have the choice of using PatronManager's embeddable, simple signup form or using one of Emma's signup/lightbox forms
- If you do not have Name Sync turned on: you should use PatronManager's embeddable, simple signup form
We recommend using Emma's signup forms, as you'll be able to customize the look and feel of these signup forms via Emma. You can even use lightbox forms - that is, signup forms you can design to pop up on your own website after a patron has clicked on a certain page, or has been on your site for more than a minute.
Note: if one of your patrons opts out of your marketing emails, if they want to sign back to up to your mailing list, they'll need to complete a special Emma signup form to be able to rejoin your mailing list. This is true even if you are using PatronManager's signup forms.
For more information, check out Emma's help documentation, specifically searching for "opt in unsubscribed contact".
You'll need to use PatronManager's embeddable, simple signup form.
Note: if one of your patrons opts out of your marketing emails, if they want to sign back to up to your mailing list, they'll need to complete a special MailChimp signup form to be able to rejoin your mailing list. This is true even though you are using PatronManager's signup forms.
For more information, check out MailChimp's help documentation, specifically searching for "resubscribe a contact".
How do I use the PatronManager signup form?
It's likely we've already created a simple, embeddable signup form for you with background and font colors to match your website. Jump over to our How to Use the PatronManager Signup Form article to find how to find, edit, and send patrons to your form.
How do I use an Emma signup form?
Most importantly, we recommend you do not add Emma Groups to your Emma Signup Forms. Instead, use our recommended "Mailing List Preferences" field (see below), sync that field up with Emma, and add it to your Emma signup forms.
For the overall process, check out Emma's help documentation for some excellent articles on how to create and customize your forms:
- For a regular signup form, search "regular signup form"
- For a lightbox form (which pops up on your website), search "lightbox form"
Why shouldn't we add Emma Groups to our Emma Signup Forms?
In short: Emma Groups don't play well with reports in PatronManager.
If a patron manually signs up for a Group via Emma, but they're not on the report you've linked to your Emma Group in PatronManager, they won't necessarily receive emails for the group they signed up for - because you're automatically updating that Group's membership based on the report, rather than the information in Emma.
How should I capture email preferences?
We recommend a multi-select picklist field called "Mailing List Preferences". Learn more about creating this custom field in our How to Track and Use Email/Mail List Preferences article, and learn how to add it to your PatronManager Signup Form in our How to Use the PatronManager Signup Form article.
