Create a signup form

Learn to create a signup form so contacts can subscribe to your address books.

Overview

You can create advanced web signup forms with just a few simple steps, generating HTML code that you can copy and add to a page on your website.

This lets new contacts sign up, enter their data, opt-in to public preferences and address books, and will allow you to collect consent information.

You can also enable an unsubscribe option on the form, allowing existing contacts to unsubscribe from your entire communications (an account-wide unsubscribe). 

Signup forms are secure

Our signup forms run over HTTPS and are secure.

Step 1: Enter Subscribe options

To set up subscribe options for your form:

1. Go to Email > Contacts > Signup forms and find the heading Subscribe options.
   
   Subscribe options
   
2. Under Show public contact data fields, select Select data fields and choose the contact data fields you want to show and collect information for.
   

   By default, we collect the email address. Any information the contact enters in these fields gets stored with the contact.

3. If you select the Require all fields to be filled in? check box, the contact must complete all fields before they can submit the form.
4. Under Show public preferences, select Yes to show any public marketing preferences options on your form. If you don't want preferences to be shown, select No. 
   

   If you show preferences, the contact can opt-in to their chosen preferences on your form.

5. Select Select address books to choose any public address books you want to show. Contacts can then choose which ones to subscribe to.

Step 2: Enter Display settings

To edit and enter the display settings of your form:

1. Under Include consent text select Yes to include consent text on your form. If you don't want to include consent text on your form, select No.
   

2. In the Consent text box, enter the text you'd like to use.
   Including consent text lets you describe the content you send to your contacts and the frequency that you send it. It's best to also include a brief summary of how you use their data. 

   If you previously created an Insight data collection, the length of the consent text is limited to 255 characters, if you haven't, it's 1000 characters.  

    

   Consent is recorded with the contact data

   When consent is given by a contact, this information will then be stored alongside them as ConsentInsight and is useful for demonstrating consent under the EU's GDPR. It's also useful if you wish to be CASL compliant. 

   The following consent data is stored:

   • consent text
   • the date and time of consent (in UTC)
   • the form's URL
   • the IP address of the signup
   • the full user agent
   • the date and time the record was created (in UTC)
   • any marketing preferences they've opted into

3. To Only allow signups when consent is given, select the check box to enforce mandatory consent. If consent isn't given, it is not possible to submit the form.
4. To Include an unsubscribe option for existing contacts, select Yes. This unsubscribes contacts from your account and all communications. This doesn't let contacts to unsubscribe themselves from a specific address book – this can be done with a preference centre.

Step 3: Set up form completion settings

To set up what happens when a contact completes your form:

1. Under Add to, select Select address books to choose one or more address books to sign a contact up to after they complete the form.
   
2. To enrol a contact onto a program. Under the label Enrol on, select Select programs and choose one or more programs to enrol a contact onto once they've completed the form.
3. To redirect the contact to a URL or a page after completing the form. Under the label Redirect to, expand the drop-down menu and to choose to redirect the contact to either a URL of your own choice or one of your landing pages.

Step 4: Embed the form on your site

To embed the form on your site:

1. Select Generate code. A panel slides in from the right with your signup form HTML. This HTML inherits your site styles, and you can modify it if you need to.
2. Select Copy to clipboard.
3. Paste the HTML code into your site.

You could also use this function in conjunction with a triggered campaign. When a contact joins a particular address book using this web form, you can trigger a campaign to be sent to them automatically. This is done by changing the settings of the address book. 

See also

If you want more ways to customise your form, you can also create a custom signup form in Pages and forms.

• Pages and forms articles