Confirmation Emails, Welcome Emails and Topics

Choose what happens when someone signs up, let people pick the kinds of email they want, and greet each reader by name.

Everything in this article lives in one place: Newsletter → Settings, then the Subscribers tab. If you have more than one list, pick the list at the top of the page first, because the joining settings belong to each list.

Asking people to confirm by email

Under Joining, the box Ask people to confirm by email before adding them is ticked for you. With it on, anyone who signs up through your form is sent a short email asking them to confirm. They show as Waiting to confirm until they do, and they only receive your newsletters once they have.

We strongly recommend leaving it on. It stops mistyped addresses and fake signups landing on your list, and it is the single biggest thing that keeps your emails reaching inboxes.

What your subscriber sees:

An email from you with the subject "Please confirm your subscription to" followed by your sender name.
A link that opens a page asking them to confirm, with a Yes, subscribe me button.
A "You are in" page once they tap it.

The confirmation link lasts a week from when the email was sent. If they open it later, the page offers Send me a new link, which emails a fresh one. Signing up again through your form does the same.

If someone tells you the email never arrived, open them on your Subscribers page and press Resend confirmation. The new link lasts a week from when you send it. It is worth asking them to check their spam or promotions folder too.

People you add by hand or import are never sent a confirmation email.

Sending a welcome email

Also under Joining, Send a welcome email when someone joins lets you pick one of your emails to go out automatically to every new subscriber. This is the one email people are actually waiting for, so it is worth writing well.

Write the welcome email like any other campaign under Newsletter → Campaigns, on the same list. See Writing and Sending a Campaign.
Come back to the Subscribers tab in Settings and choose it from the list.
Press Save.

It goes to people who join through a signup form, as soon as they confirm (or straight away if you do not ask people to confirm). It is not sent to people you add by hand or import. For a series of emails spread over days or weeks, see Automatic Follow-up Emails.

Topics

Topics let people choose the kinds of email they get, so someone tired of your offers can drop them without leaving your newsletter altogether. With no topics, every campaign goes to your whole list, which is a perfectly good way to run a newsletter.

To add one:

Under Topics, fill in the Topic name in your words, such as Events, Offers or New releases.
Optionally add A line explaining it. Subscribers see it under the name.
Decide on Send this to everyone unless they turn it off. Leave it ticked for anything most people want. Untick it for something people should ask for, and only those who tick it on their preferences page will get it.
Press Add topic.

When you write a campaign, choose the topic under What kind of email this is. Anyone who turned that topic off is left out. If you remove a topic later, campaigns that used it go to your whole list again.

Where subscribers make their choices

Every newsletter has Unsubscribe and Choose what you get links at the bottom. Choose what you get opens a preferences page, in your branding, where a subscriber can:

tick or untick your topics,
choose which of your lists to stay on, if they are on more than one,
correct their first and last name,
or unsubscribe from everything.

Unsubscribe takes one tap to confirm and works immediately. Afterwards we ask, entirely optionally, why they left. Their answer shows on their profile under Why they left.

Your own fields

First name, last name and email address are always there. Your own fields let you keep anything else you want to know about each subscriber, such as a membership tier, a renewal date or the branch they use. You can have up to 20.

Under Your own fields, enter a Field name in your words.
Choose What kind of answer it holds: Text, Number, Date or Web address.
Optionally fill in Use this when it is blank, so a newsletter shows something sensible for anyone you have no answer for.
Press Add field.

Fill in the answers from a spreadsheet column when you import, or one person at a time on their contact profile under the Consent and fields tab. Answers belong to each list, so the same person can have a different answer on another list.

Greeting each reader by name

In the email builder, click into a text box, press Personalize and pick what to insert. First name inserts {{ first_name | there }}, so if you type "Hi" in front of it, Sam reads "Hi Sam" and anyone without a first name on file reads "Hi there". Your own fields appear in the same menu, and each one shows its tag on the Settings page (for example {{ membership_tier | Member }}). The words after the | are what readers see when the answer is blank. Tags also work in the subject line, and the builder preview shows an example person so you can check how it reads.