In order to sign up for a newsletter, someone can fill out the newsletter sign up form or click the check box to sign up for marketing communications on other forms, such as event registrations. In the DOI settings I can also chose that the DOI is activiated for specific forms, but not for lists. When building a workflow and specifying who should receive a DOI (the people checking the box on other forms) I’m not able to select the DOI email.
Does anyone know how can I make sure, that everyone who signs up for the newsletter receives the DOI, not just from the newsletter form but also when checking the box when submitting other forms?
Thank you!
Hi @SKutschinski,
Just to confirm, you’d like the double opt-in email to be sent only when the subscription checkbox is checked, correct?
This requires leaving the system settings behind to some extent and creating your double opt-in logic entirely with your own workflows and own custom marketing emails.
When adding a link in an automated marketing email, you can change the link type to a subscription type link and select subscription confirmation as link goal. When clicked, HubSpot will treat this like a system double opt-in confirmation and will store the value ‘User clicked confirmation’ in the property ‘Marketing email confirmation status’. That’s how you can create your own double opt-in email.
You can now create workflows and enroll records based on their lack of a confirmation, their checked subscription box on the form and send them a double opt-in email.
There are quite a lot of nuances and potential pitfalls to this, highly dependent of the existing setup and configuration. Especially the system settings require attention. However, broad strokes, this is how it would be done.
I have set this up for HubSpot portals more times than I can count so if you’re interested in paid consultation, let me know.
Have a great day and let me know if you have any follow-up questions!
Hello Karsten,
Yes I want the DOI email to be sent when the check box is clicked. We do have that check box on the newsletter sign up form as well. But the DOI settings don’t allow for that kind of specifications to my knowledge. So I will have to create a workflow and set up an Email. I just noticed that the existing email for the DOI that we have set up, can not be used in a workflow.
@SKutschinski wrote:
But the DOI settings don’t allow for that kind of specifications to my knowledge. So I will have to create a workflow and set up an Email. I just noticed that the existing email for the DOI that we have set up, can not be used in a workflow.
As I said in my previous reply, you’ll have to ‘abandon’ the system double opt-in and create your own double opt-in solution from scratch.
That involves:
- Creating an automated email from scratch, adding a hyperlink or CTA, changing the link type to subscription / confirmation.
- Create a contact-based workflow that only enrolls contacts when they check the subscription checkbox in your form (based on subscription type opt-in), then checks whether the email address has been confirmed before (based on ‘Marketing email confirmation status’), then sends the automated email from step 1
This is currently the only reliable way to send double opt-in emails based on your own requirements and would also allow to set up language, content type, reminder versions of the email address.
As I mentioned there some more nuances to this, including keeping the system double opt-in turned on but limiting it to not firing. It depends on the portal setup on how to proceed exactly.
The general steps however, would be as described above. This gives you full control of when the email is sent, which version of the email is sent and also be close enough to what HubSpot is expecting you to do (still use the default property / double opt-in mechanisms).
Hey @SKutschinski
To ensure everyone who signs up for your newsletter receives the double opt-in (DOI) email, follow these steps: Set up double opt-in for emails
Toggle the Turn on double opt-in switch on click the Select where DOI should be turned on dropdown. choose “All forms and pages” to apply the DOI to all HubSpot and non-HubSpot forms.
Hello Gaurav, I specifically do not want to turn on the DOI for alle pages and forms, because we are using certain confirmations emails when signing up for events etc. where it makes no sence to require a DOI before receiving this confirmation. We had the DOI turned on for all pages and forms before, and ran into the issue, that event registration confirmations could not be received if the DOI was not confirmed. But from a legal perspective the DOI is required for marketing communications nor transactional emails.
This is how I solved it:
1. In our newsletter form, we use a single checkbox field (not HubSpot’s Data Privacy field). That field is connected to a custom property that we called “Agreed to Data Privacy” (but in German).
2. When the form is submitted, it triggers a first workflow that sends a double opt-in email. That email contains a “confirm” button that, like Karsten explained, has an email subscription link.
3. A second workflow is triggered when someone clicks on any link in that double opt-in email
+ two filters: 1. Has marked the checkbox (agreed to data privacy) in the form & 2. has clicked on the confirmation button’s DOI link
This workflow then changes the subscription type of a contact to “Newsletter”. I hope this helps!
@AdrianoVM Thank you for documenting your solution. I am trying to follow it, and although the automation runs perfectly, the subscription type is not changed. Do you have any tipps for me? The action I am using is Subscribe subscription type Marketing Email | Newsletter
(trying to add a screenshot of my settings but it won’t let me)
Hey @kerstin682,
Thanks so much for following up here!
It’s strange that the automation would work as expected, while not updating the subscription type. Re-tagging @karstenkoehler, @AdrianoVM, and @Gaurav_Aggarwal to see if any of them has any idea why this might be occuring.
Shane, Senior Community Moderator
Hi @kerstin682,
If you share a screenshot of your workflow with me in a direct message, on LinkedIn or via the email address on my community profile, I’m happy to review.
- The workflow action that updates the subscription status will never update it from an opt-out set by the user. It’ll simply fail. That might be one explanation.
- In the workflow actions log, you can check for the contact if there is an error message for the action that should update the subscription status: Understand your workflow details page
Thank you for tagging me, @STierney.
Hi all, thank you so much for the quick replies!! I was at this for way longer than I care to admit and the workflow never threw an error. Finally, I realized that it simply takes a few minutes for the contact to update. It was actually working I just was not patient enough to see the result.
Overall I think being able to only send a double opt in when the newsletter checkbox is clicked is a very reasonable and standard approach to contact us forms, and this is a super complicated workaround, but I am so thankful for the detailed description here and als everybody’s willingness to help so quickly. Apologies for the false alarm.
