Questions
Email Reach Newsletter problem
So we learned today that if a user unsubscribes from an email newsletter for any reason or through any method, the system will then prevent them from resubscribing to that newsletter in the future.
To me the worst part about this is that when that user attempts to resubscribe it silently fails. They receive no error message or warning that they are unable to subscribe. The mange newsletters box appears to show they are now subscribed but if they leave the page their subscriptions don’t “stick.” They’d only see this if they left and then returned to the same screen.
This became apparent with a call from a frustrated reader this afternoon. To them our website is simply broken.
I understand that Town News has to work within the confines of the Constant Contact system, but it really seems like there needs to be some additional functionality added around this feature.
We’re working hard to promote our newsletters and increase our subscribers to be more attractive to advertisers. This “bug” has the potential to cost us revenue.
For every reader that actually takes the time to reach out when they still don’t receive the emails, how many simply don’t bother and assume we just don’t know what we’re doing? 1 in 10?
Any thoughts?
Answer
I had the same frustration. We had someone who must have accidentally unsubscribed and all my attempts to add them back to the email list were useless because if they unsubscribe from Constant Contact they have to jump through hoops to get their email added back.
There is a way to manually re-subscribe them through CC. I can get you the way to do that if you still need it.
But everything is a "your website is broken" whether it's the actual website or an email.
Support said that if I send them the info they can add the person back. If there is a way for me to access Constant Contact and do it myself that would be great.
You have to make a sign-up form through Constant Contact. Basically you create the form, send them the link and they add their email. That's CC's way of verifying that they absolutely want to resubscribe. Usually when this happens I just add them myself from the link. But if you want to send them the link to the form you can.
After you create the form(make sure to link it to the newsletter you want it to add them to) you can view the URL the form is at...
Thanks Nick! I looked through the CC docs today and found the same thing. Thanks for the well-documented answer!
Great answer Nick. Thanks for your help.
Unfortunately Town News support is telling me that customers are not allowed to have access to that interface. So of course, I've gotta ask, how'd you get it?
Any thoughts here Christine?
I hadn't thought about that. We actually already had a CC account and so we were already paying CC directly for email marketing. So rather than paying TownNews they just allowed BLOX to talk with the CC website. So we were a special circumstance.
I'm bumping this back up around this specific issue that was never addressed in my original post. It has become a problem again, this time impacting the President of our parent company:
To me the worst part about this is that when that user attempts to resubscribe it silently fails. They receive no error message or warning that they are unable to subscribe. The mange newsletters box appears to show they are now subscribed but if they leave the page their subscriptions don’t “stick.” They’d only see this if they left and then returned to the same screen.
This became apparent with a call from a frustrated reader this afternoon. To them our website is simply broken.
I understand that Town News has to work within the confines of the Constant Contact system, but it really seems like there needs to be some additional functionality added around this feature.
Customer support service by UserEcho
You have to make a sign-up form through Constant Contact. Basically you create the form, send them the link and they add their email. That's CC's way of verifying that they absolutely want to resubscribe. Usually when this happens I just add them myself from the link. But if you want to send them the link to the form you can.
After you create the form(make sure to link it to the newsletter you want it to add them to) you can view the URL the form is at...