I would like to edit my Email subscriptions page (the one that people see when they click “Manage preferences” on an email) to include some other optional Contact property-tied fields - ie First name, Last name, zip code, and phone number.
The AI support recommended me some HTML to drop in, but the best I could do getting a field to show up off to the right of the form, throwing off the whole layout. And I didn’t test to see if it actually functioned or not.
I would like these form fields to appear toward the top of the subscription type options section, or at least above the “unsubscribe from all” option. From the looks of it, I’ll need to work within the HTML editor, perhaps creating new modules and inserting them in the right places. But my HTML/CSS/Javascript knowledge is rudimentary, and that’s putting it genrously.
Could anyone provide me the steps of adding these form fields to the functional form area?
Hi @02638! Welcome to the Community-- happy to have you here
You are correct that the subscription preference pages (and other system pages) require HTML, CSS, and HubL knowledge for customizations. As an aside, we do have an Idea here for drag-and-drop editing for these pages-- be sure to upvote to help it gain traction!
I am curious about the motivation for these fields on the subscription preferences page. Could you provide some context as to why you want to add these fields? Ideally, when a contact is visiting that page, HubSpot should be able to use tracking cookies to tie the subscription to the existing contact information. Understanding your overall goal will help me or some other Community members provide some possible solutions.
Thank you for the response! Upvoted!
We want to be able to collect this information to use for segmenting and personalization for better marketing performnace. For most of the people that will browse to this form, we only have their email address, which they’ve provided in a subscription banner.
For most of the banners on our website, once people provide their email address, they are sent an autoresponder with a link to the form that they can use to refine their subscriptions. By default, they automatically are subscribed to two subscription types, which are aligned to two separate subscription categories, each with a weekly newsletter. There are three other main categories of interest that they can also opt in to.
We’ve created properties that, via workflows, map yes/no toe each of these subscription types. But we can’t get those properties to pre-populate on a form that also has the other fields we want. That’s not good - we need the fields pre-populated so that if they click a box off, they’ll be removed from that subscription type (remember, by default we’re subscribing them to to two). But with the custom form, those fields appear blank, so there’s no change if the boxes are submitted blank. They remain on whichever subscription type they were already on, because there’s been no change. With the subscription type form, the default is all boxes are checked, which means unchecking a box will remove them from the type they want off of.
Hey @Jnix284, @evaldas, or @TomM2 do any of you have some tips for collecting contact information from the subscription preferences page or a potential workaround for @02638? Thanks in advance!
Just to clarify, in the initial message you mentioned that you would like to edit the “Email subscriptions page” that people land on when they click on “Manage preferences” in a sent email. That page is generated by a system template, and, as far as I know, you can control the styling and add more modules but there aren’t any options to add more fields to the default subscription type form - the only purpose it serves is updating the types of emails you would like to receive.
That being said, you can set up a form in HubSpot with the fields you would like users to fill out (i.e. First name, Last name) and add checkboxes for each of your subscriptions to that form. HubSpot forms allow you to make boxes checked by default - you could have them all checked and then let the user uncheck the ones they do not want.
There are default properties created by HubSpot for each of the subscriptions that are checkboxes and signify that a person has opted out of that communication if it checked.
For example, if you had “Feedback Emails” as a subscription type, this would be the corresponding property:
You could then utilize workflows to update these default properties based on which of the checkboxes users have left off on the form.
Ultimately, if the goal is to collect more information from the user, the best approach would be to offer the user something of value where they would need to fill out a form with their full information. Updating subscription types does not offer much incentive for providing that.
Thanks for your response. The approach to forms that you are recommending is what we tried in the beginning, but it was quickly revealed to be inadequate when we were unable to get it to pre-populate correctly in our tests.
We have 5 subscription categories. When someone subscribes via a banner that calls out general interest in our organization, the default workflow subscribes them to two different types, 1 and 2. Optionally, we also have categories 3, 4, and 5 that are not included in th is default workflow, although people can subscribe to them via form and through other banners on the website.
When someone goes through these default banners (categories 1 and 2), they are sent an email with a link to the form. That form would ideally show them as subscribed to categories 1 and 2. Then and there, they can decide if one or the other category works for them and unsubscribe from it by unchecking the box. They also have the other categories to choose from.
But if the form doesn’t prepopulate, they can’t unsubscribe from either (because submitting a blank field is “no change”). Worse, there is no indication that they are subscribed to either category.
This email and linked form is not just for the new subscribers, but also for people that would like to change their preferences, to add themselves to or unsub from categories 3, 4, and 5 as well as the defaults 1 and 2. And we’d like to collect additional information as well.
The “manage preferences” form automatically has all subscription type fields checked automatically. While this isn’t ideal, it at least presents the user with the ability to unsubscribe from individual types/lists without unsubscribing from all. All categories 1-5 are checked, and people can control their experience by either leaving them that way or un-checking. We can’t achieve something similar with the form, it appears, unless their properties can accurately pre-populate.
We want the additional fields that we collect to be optional (first name/last name/zip code/phone number), only email to be required. I hear what you’re saying about incentives but we want to test this regardless. We’re also a bit different from your typical consumer goods/servics situation. Many people reaching out to us are seeking a personalized relationship.
Hi there - just checking on this. I know I was tardy to respond, but in my defense, I did say pretty early on that pre-population was the issue I was having with using a custom form, so I don’t think we can call that a solution.
I would like to edit my Email subscriptions page (the one that people see when they click “Manage preferences” on an email) to include some other optional Contact property-tied fields - ie First name, Last name, zip code, and phone number.
I mentioned in the original reply that it is not something that is possible to do. To be more specifc, it is not possible to add additional form fields to the subscription preferences form that comes with the “Manage preferences” page routed from the footer of an email. You can control that form only by adding or removing the available subscription types in your settings.
Sometimes the solution is that there is not direct solution to a specific problem.
However, there are some alternatives, such as:
(1) Trying to add an additional form to the subscription preferences page. This is not great because there would be two separate forms and it might confuse the user.
(2) Having a separate page with a custom form. It requires a cookied user to view the page and make sure your form has “Pre-populate contact fields with known values” option turned on. Sounds like this option has not been working for your use case.
Since many people are reaching out to you seeking a more personalized relationship, you could look into the Memberships feature. Your users could set up a login and have gated pages that would allow them editing their profile because once they are logged in, they can accurately see their properties, instead of relying on browser cookies that may or may not work when they visit your site.
Thank you for your response, I truly appreciate it.
(1) Trying to add an additional form to the subscription preferences page. This is not great because there would be two separate forms and it might confuse the user.
---Do you mean a hyperlink to another form? Or is it easy enough to create a form and embed it into the subscription management form I’m trying to edit?
(2) Having a separate page with a custom form. It requires a cookied user to view the page and make sure your form has “Pre-populate contact fields with known values” option turned on. Sounds like this option has not been working for your use case.
---I’m going to give this another shot. First step is to create a checkbox that somehow allows the user to unsubscribe. Already having difficulty there, going to have to start another thread…
Yes, it’s easy enough to add a second form to the actual subscription preferences template. You can achieve that by dropping in this code for the default HubSpot form module:
{% module "form"
path="@hubspot/form"
form={
"form_id": "XXXXXX-XXXXXXXXXX-XXXX",
"response_type": "inline",
"message": "Thanks for submitting the form."
}
%}
Obviously, replace the XXXX with the id of the form you would like to use there.
If you wanted to do a redirect instead of an inline message:
Thank you so much, started experimenting with the Embed. Can submission of the embedded form be tied to the main “update email preferences” button or does it have to have its own?
And if so, is there a way to move the embedded form to right above the main “update email preferences” button? It was a little hard finding an acceptable place to drop the code, but right now it sits, somewhat nicely, atop the email subscription questions (with its own button). Don’t know how flexible that placement is, so I’m curious about my options?
No problem. As I mentioned in the previous post, it would be a separate form. This means that the submissions of the two forms cannot be tied together into a single submission. Which also means that it would not be possible to move the embedded form right above the “update email preferences”. It can be placed next to (above/below/to the side) of the preferences form, but not inside of it.
