Email Marketing With Bluepark

[HaleyCalire]

Hi

I have a few questions regarding Bluepark's Email Marketing facility that I was hoping you could help with.

Non Purchasing Visitors:

1. Can you place an opt-in form on the site with Blueparks system that acts similar to Aweber, Mailchimp, Icontact? This would help build a list of people who visit our site but do not make a purchase so we can market our products to them via email.
2. If we can, how do I do it?

Thanks for any help.

Haley

[ThomasMurray]

Do you mean a "Sign up to our newsletter" block with only a single field for the customers email address? That's what many people do on Bluepark.

[HaleyCalire]

Hi Thomas

Yes a newsletter, discounts, competitions etc.

[ThomasMurray]

Create a new form in the Form Manager, with just one field for an email address.

Then if you create a new block in the Block Manager, there will be a "Form" tab, on this tab you can insert the form you've just created into the block.

Then simply assign this block to any page/layout that you want it on.

[ThomasMurray]

Also, in the form settings, make sure that "Submission" is set to Database.

Then when you create a new email campaign in the email manager, you can add the "Newsletter Database" to the email, so everyone that has signed up for the newsletter will receive that particular email.

[HaleyCalire]

Thank you for your help Thomas - I will give that a go.

[Terry]

Brilliant Thomas - thats very helpful. I will also do that!
Terry

[HaleyCalire]

Hi Thomas

When creating the form, there is a drop down list if the 'field' section, but no 'enter email' field to choose. Do you know what I would choose so that the email box appears?

Thanks

[ThomasMurray]

Hi Thomas

When creating the form, there is a drop down list if the 'field' section, but no 'enter email' field to choose. Do you know what I would choose so that the email box appears?

Thanks

I use a standard text field (small)
Then you can edit this further: Change the Field name to "Email Address", or something similar.
Make sure the Required box is ticked.
Conversion: Lower case
Validation: E-mail address

In the auto-response tab you can also set up a courtesy email, simply assign the E-mail address field and enter an E-mail subject & body.

[HaleyCalire]

Thanks Thomas

That worked great.

[Terry]

Thomas, I am missing something, but don't know what!
I set up the form and the block, and added it to my home page
I have just tried it, and it seems to work, but I didn't receive an e-mail advising me that I had signed up (and I set up an auto response)
And is there a list somewhere on BP that will tell me the newsletter signups?
Sorry to be a pain!
Terry

[shelleym]

On your Form Editor you should have a tab 'Submissions' where you can see all that have signed up

then:
In your Email Editor you'll have a 'Recipents' tab and there will be a dropdown 'Import from form' - select the form name

[Terry]

Must have just been slow system...E-mails received now for submission! All seems fine, and also have found where the submissions are listed on Blue Park - Cheers Thomas - that was a great help
Terry

[Terry]

oops - must have sent at same time Shelley - all seems now that you :-)
Terry

[Terry]

sorry - one more question

What do I use in the auto response to make the e-mail say Dear (Name of person signing up)

I have three fields, first name and surname
Cheers
Terry

[ThomasMurray]

sorry - one more question

What do I use in the auto response to make the e-mail say Dear (Name of person signing up)

I have three fields, first name and surname
Cheers
Terry

I don't think this can be done, although if it is possible it will most probably be done by placing %informal at the appropriate place in the email body.

On a side-note, I'm not sure what other people's opinions are on this, and some people may disagree, but I would recommend having only a single field on your newsletter form, the email address. This seems to be what the majority of websites do online.

I think the reason is that internet browsers are inherently lazy, maybe even more so with the kind of customers who won't buy anything but will quickly sign-up to a newsletter before exiting your website. Also, while having the name of the customer is a cute extra, it is pretty much surplus information when it comes to converting that person from a browser to a customer.

[vazalla]

Is it possible to remove the security check from the forms (the sum). I would prefer just to have the email field show up without that security check

[Dave]

Is it possible to remove the security check from the forms (the sum). I would prefer just to have the email field show up without that security check

Go into your form and untick "Use Image Verification"

However, the purpose of the image verification is to prevent bots from completing your form. So you MAY see an increase in spam e-mails if you disable it.

[vazalla]

Thabnks Dave, will remove it for now and see how it goes, if the spam starts then will put it back in place