I want an email form with just one field, email address, that people type their email into, not giving anything, it will just say “for our occasional mail out”… I will collect the addresses into a simple list that I have, as my amount of visitors and people giving their address will be quite small… so a form that comes to me per user is fine… any ideas, of paid or free contact forms that allow for you to have only one field? I looked at many email solutions, all had too much capability for my needs.
I know you are using Foundry for your site. Do you have Potion Pack?
If so, you could use the Form Pro stack.
In the settings, you can have it just show Name and Email address fields. It does include a “human test” to prevent spam, but that can also be disabled too, if you want. While Name can’t be omitted, but it can be made optional. Name can be hidden with a little custom CSS.
The subject can be hidden and can be set so that every subscription request will come in with the same subject to make them easy for you to handle.
Personally, I’d show name and set it to optional and include the human test to prevent span. However, it can be as sparse as shown below:
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To avoid getting tripped up over GDPR ensure you have a mechanism in place to test that the person giving you the email is actually the email address owner, that they confirm a 2nd time they want to receive marketing emails from you and that you record all this.
You should also ensure you have a simple and easy to use unsubscribe process for people wishing to stop receiving the emails.
EDIT: This is relevant if you or those subscribing are in the EU.
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So… Is GDPR enforced? I know nothing about it. I’ve seen and submitted to some that are as shown above, just one field, and a button, no 2nd ask, no unsubscribe feature… My bus. and customer base is really small… the amount of submissions will be small, do I need to worry about GDPR? If I do, then I need a more complex solution, perhaps Post Office… my subscriber base is all over the world, including the European Union… do they auto sense and ban websites that don’t comply? This is a simple thing that has become complex due to EU laws it sounds like.
Even in the U.S., you have FTC anti-spam laws that need to be followed.
Here are a few from the USA:
- Every email needs an easy opt-out option
- Honor opt-out requests quickly
- Give a physical address
- Tell readers where your email is coming from
- These laws vary from location
Most folks use an outside service like MailChimp or its many competitors to help with compliance issues.
Most of the mail services offer free or inexpensive starter accounts. MailChimp’s free account works for up to 2,000 contacts.
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I agree with others here, don’t collect email addresses yourself if you can help it. It is a shear hell-hole of bureaucracy, technical conundrums and over-regulation the whole way. The efforts involved towards compliance are just crazy.
For any size mailing list, you are better using the services of another company with experience and established systems capable of handling everything. Then you will be compliant with all the rules, like letting people instantly opt-out of being on your mailing list. And proper security / encryption of the data.
Much like taking website payments, email subscriptions are best handled by someone else, for the average website owner. Sure you can do it all yourself, but often it’s simply not worth the time and trouble involved.
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