Double opt-in configuration

Thank you for your help! 

A manual process will be OK for the moment. I hope the issue will be fixed soon to switch to “automatic”.

@Eric_Marc agreed! :) Let me know if you have any troubles setting this up!

Hey Liz, any update about this feature yet? It would be more than helpful!

@Liz - just tossing in my two cents on this double-opt in “feature”:

• from a security point of view, this is a ‘process’ and not a feature of a software product
• many of the ‘marketing mailer’ products - that have incorporated crm-ish features, landing pages, and forms in addition to their mail-list/mailing functions - have added in these ‘process oriented’ features into their platforms so that they can control the process. 
• Typeform is NOT a marketing mailer platform (yet - but who knows in the future...) and does not provide the crm-ish features that Hubspot, Mailchimp, Convertkit, etc are providing and so is only one part of the process flow (for double opt-in) 

My recommendation follows along the solution design principles of mapping out the process flow, examining the tools that you have that meet the requirements of each function box in the process and then determining if the tool at hand, in any given box, can meet the requirements 

• at the moment, Typeform does not control the ‘second step’ in the double opt-in process that was mentioned in the start of the thread, Mailchimp does.. ‘forcing’ the trigger for the second email for opt-in SHOULD be as you describe inside Mailchimp
• if someone wants to use Typeform unto itself to mimic the double-opt-in process, then they might be able to implement something along these lines
  • complete initial form and use ‘email notifications’ to send user the confirmation message ie include in the body of the respondent message the link to a second typeform that acts as the ‘confirmation target’ 
  • include hidden fields in the embedded url (in the respondent email) that, when clicked by the recipient, would be passed to the ‘confirmation typeform’ so that the user gets the message along the lines of “great! thanks for confirming that you want to be part of our newsletter/group! Here’s the link to download the free ebook we promised you” - on submit of this second form, the data could then be passed to the Mailchimp/Hubspot etc. platform along with a field/tag that indicates that DOI has been completed. 

Fit for purpose tools inside a thought-out process flow. 

Now, maybe we can push at the Typeform integrations and help centre teams to figure out and document a few of the “here’s how you do it with Mailchimp/Hubspot, etc… “ guides into the Help Centre. 

Apart from that maybe the folks from Integromat ( @Michaela ), Zapier and automate.io could provide us with some examples of how it could be done with their integration tools. 

just my tuppence before second coffee. 

cheers

des

Hey @john.desborough , thanks for tagging me so that I can jump in with a bit of Integromat insight 

And hi there, @Eric_Marc, hope you’re having an awesome day! We sure can find a way of automating this! 

So, you’d go to Integromat and do something along these lines:

1. Select the ‘Watch Responses’ Typeform module and

• create a connection between Typeform and Integromat
• select the form you want to monitor

2. Add the ‘Add/Update a Subscriber’ Mailchimp module and

• connect your Mailchimp account to Integromat
• select the list you want to add the subscribers to 
• for the ‘Email address’ field, map the answer from the previous Typeform module 

• for the ‘Status’ field, choose ‘Pending’ 

The final scenario:

Now, users who have submitted the form will get a Mailchimp confirmation email when saved as ‘Pending’ 

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - 

@Michaela - thanks for this.. that looks fairly straightforward

@Eric_Marc - did we come close to helping solve the problem or at least give you some additional ideas??

des

Hey Michaela,

thanks for sharing this idea.

I´ve tried it out and unfortunately I get a Error.

Do you have any idea to solve that?

thanks & best,

Olaf

Hi Olaf, lovely to hear from you! 

Soo, let’s see what we have here 

if you’d like to automatically send the confirmation email even to existing subscribers, you need to tick the ‘Create a new customer or update an existing one’ option in the Mailchimp module. The subscriber will then disappear from your contact list and will be added again once they confirm the subscription. 

If you don’t want this  to happen, you can add an ‘Ignore’ directive after the Mailchimp module. You’ll do so like this:

• right click on the Mailchimp module
• select ‘Add error handler’
• choose ‘Ignore’ 

This will (not a real shocker coming up) ignore the error. It will also mark the scenario execution status as 'successful' as if there was no error and the subscriber's status won't change.

If you’d like to learn a bit more about Integromat’s error handling in general or even about Ignore directive specifically, I totally recommend checking out this tutorial by Max van Collenburg.

If you’d like to dive in deeper, you can also have a look at the official intro to error handlers on Integromat.

Hope this helps 

@Michaela - great set of material.. thank you!

Hi @Liz, do you know how I get the link where the respondent can confirm their subscription status in Mailchimp? I can only find the sign up link, but I don't want the respondent to have to enter all the data again. I hope there is a solution for this. 

Hi @meinebackbox I poked around the help center for Mailchimp, but I wasn’t able to find if it’s possible to pull this URL outside of Mailchimp. Though, I’d suggest reaching out to their support team for clarification on this!

Hi @meinebackbox, have you figured out how to have subscribers confirm their email addresses out of Typeform? I’m currently stuck at the same point. Would appreciate any ideas. Cheers!

Hi @john.desborough thx for your thoughts on the workaround for the DOI process in typeform.

I followed your instruction but I’m actually not sure how you pass the “hidden field” email information within a link in the notification email. Can you help me out?

This is how it looks in typeform:

This is the screen of the “activation” page

My recommendation follows along the solution design principles of mapping out the process flow, examining the tools that you have that meet the requirements of each function box in the process and then determining if the tool at hand, in any given box, can meet the requirements 

• at the moment, Typeform does not control the ‘second step’ in the double opt-in process that was mentioned in the start of the thread, Mailchimp does.. ‘forcing’ the trigger for the second email for opt-in SHOULD be as you describe inside Mailchimp
• if someone wants to use Typeform unto itself to mimic the double-opt-in process, then they might be able to implement something along these lines
  • complete initial form and use ‘email notifications’ to send user the confirmation message ie include in the body of the respondent message the link to a second typeform that acts as the ‘confirmation target’ 
  • include hidden fields in the embedded url (in the respondent email) that, when clicked by the recipient, would be passed to the ‘confirmation typeform’ so that the user gets the message along the lines of “great! thanks for confirming that you want to be part of our newsletter/group! Here’s the link to download the free ebook we promised you” - on submit of this second form, the data could then be passed to the Mailchimp/Hubspot etc. platform along with a field/tag that indicates that DOI has been completed.

Thank you very much for your help

@Bjoern1987 - in the message above the phrase “might be able to implement” was the key point of my message at the time.  I also said it was before my second coffee.. lol.. 

here’s an example of one method i have used that is simply two typeforms - passing the email from the subscribe/optin to the the second form with has the confirmation request (and a note that say by clicking yes, you agree to receive stuff) - the first form is only the email entry question extracted from what would be longer subscription form and the second is the confirmation form. Redirect upon completion is used to move from the first to the second… and would be used to go from the second to the next form if you wanted

For the ease of getting the double-optin via email, I am currently using Typeform to:

• create the subscription sign up form
• integrate the form with one of my two autoresponders - Keap (infusionsoft) is currently my fave
  • in setting up the integration i tag the response with a pre-existing tag in Keap (works the same in Convertkit, Active Campaign etc) 
• my Keap automation recognizes a new record/entry with this particular tag and immediately sends an email to the user that has a button with the url to the confirmation typeform that includes the hidden field (dynamically adds the email address of the new/updated record) 

thoughts change with coffee

Allright @john.desborough  thank you. I now found another workaround within Mailchimp that is though a little bit more work and the “delay” of about 10-15 min in Customer Journey is not ideal but it work.

Thanks for your help anyways.

Glad you were able to find a solution in Mailchimp, @Bjoern1987 ! Let us know if there’s anything else we can help answer. 

Hi Liz, 

it there an easier solution available by now? 

Thanks is advance. 

@Marce This is the workaround we have for now, but if anything changes, I’ll post an update here!

Hi Everyone!

I’ve set up my Mailchimp integration on typeform and so far it works - email addresses are being subscribed to Mailchimp.

However, as I am located in Germany a double opt-in email must be triggered in Mailchimp first, before I can send them to my Mailchimp automation.

And this is my problem: I don’t know how to do this.

I’ve chatted with Mailchimp about this and they said that there are only two options:

1. I need to integrate a Mailchimp hosted form into my typeform (but this is, as far as I know, not possible, right?)
2. “The only other way it would be possible to send the double opt-in e-mail would be if the contacts that are being added by Typeform to come into Mailchimp as Pending instead of Subscribed.” → that’s what Mailchimp said.

So is it possible to add contacts as pending instead of subscribed?

Or do you have any other idea how to approach this problem?

Or do you know of any other mailing platform that would be able to do this (other than Mailchimp)?

Thank you so much for your help - it’s really appreciated!

Best!

Markus

Hi @DJ Markus Rosenbaum I’ve added your post here where we have an existing conversation about this!

Hi @Liz, your suggested work-around that you mentioned above is unfortunately not working for me as in Germany this has to be an automated process to be correct and legal.

Could you have a look at my questions and see if anything comes to your mind that could help me with that? I think Typeform is an amazing tool but I need to be able to create leads in a way which is according to the German law.

I am sorry, I can see that this seems to be an ongoing topic but it would be very sad to not be able to use Typeform. Your help is really, really appreciated.

Thank you so much! :)

Best wishes

Markus

@DJ Markus Rosenbaum - not sure if this is pertinent but if you create your ‘audience’ in Mailchimp into which you are going to insert these typeform respondents, and mark this audience as ‘double opt-in’ by default, then any user added to that audience would be marked pending and have the double opt-in email sent from Mailchimp (at least according to the documentation that i am seeing) 

I’ve not personally tested the native integration nor Zapier to see if you can assign specific audiences in Mailchimp but that may be an option 

des

Hi @john.desborough , thank you for your thoughts I’m gonna try it and will come back to you! 👍Do you have the link to the documentation by any chance?

Thanks again

Markus