Using signup forms you have a great opportunity to collect new contacts that automatically transfer to your database in Ecomail. These forms collect new contacts. If there is a contact that is already subscribed to your newsletter trying to subscribe again (p.e. trying to get a discount for the first purchase), the form automatically informs the contact that they are already subscribed. This prevents the contacts from regaining the discount on the first purchase if they already got one when they first subscribed.

Another way of using signup forms is to update contacts that are already registered in your database.

To give you an idea, we will give you an example of setting up a subscription to an e-book using the signup form. This e-book is available on your website and you wish for your readers to subscribe to it using a subscription form, therefore not only new contacts will have the option to subscribe (subscribing for the newsletter and the e-book), but also already registered contacts will have the ability to sign up (already subscribed for the newsletter, subscribing for the e-book).

The update existing contact function is available in the form settings.

Thanks to this function, contacts that already exist in your database can enter the form (without being shown a message about the email being already registered). When you activate this function, you will automatically have two options of thank-you pages shown to your subscriber - for a new subscriber and a subscriber that already exists.

Both, new and existing addresses will enter the signup field and they will be shown the relevant page after sending, the so-called thank you page.

New contacts are typically informed about the necessity to confirm double opt-in:

Contacts that are already in your database will receive a different thank-you page:

This is because we never change the original source and registration date for existing contacts. Therefore, if you need to carry additional information about if the contact has subscribed again (and run Automation accordingly), you can add a so-called "hidden" field in the form. This field has a value that you set in but isn't visible to the subscriber. This value can carry information about where the contact signed up from. Any contact that will subscribe using this form, new or existing, will get the value from the hidden field.

In our case, every contact that signs up using our form will have the value "ebook" into the custom field "Collection Type".

If you wish to send content using Automation based on the sign-up activity, you need to set up two triggers:

The 1st trigger is "Login to the list": for new contacts. The Automation will start for them after checking the registration date.

The 2nd trigger is "Recurring": For existing contacts, where there isn't a Login (because they already exist in your database) the automation will check if the custom field "Collection Form" contains the value "ebook" and if it does, the Automation will start.

If you have any further questions regarding new contacts in Ecomail, you can contact us at support@ecomail.app

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