Newsletter subscription functionality

[ben]

Background

I am in the process of creating an Eyeo newsletter. Doing so requires two confirmation pages that we should host on eyeo.com.

What to change

​https://eyeo.com/en/newsletter is where the users should subscribe to the newsletter. This would contain only one input box asking for the user's email address. Below it we should have a Terms and Conditions block (to be provided by Kai). Under the T & C would be a checkbox affirming that they had read the T & C and a final button that would send a confirmation mail to the email address provided.

Email address should be validated using ^\w[\w.+!-]+@\w[\w.-]+\.[a-zA-Z]{2,6}$ regular expression, same as on ​https://eyeo.com/en/contact. We should have client-side validation as well, in order to display an immediate feedback for invalid email addresses.

The second page (probably ​https://eyeo.com/en/newsletter again but with some query parameters) is linked in the confirmation mail. It should use CleverReach API to add user's email address to their database and say "Thanks for subscribing to the Adblock Plus Contributors Newsletter! Your first email will be coming soon!" Additionally, I think there should be a link to acceptableads.org on this page.

[saroyanm]

I think some information is missing:

• How we should proceed with the data ?
• Where we should have a link to subscription page ?

[ben]

How we should proceed with the data?
What data? The terms of the newsletter will be supplied by Kai.

Where we should have a link to subscription page?
The link to acceptableads.org? I'd say toward the bottom, wherever it fits in aesthetically.

[saroyanm]

Replying to ben:

What data? The terms of the newsletter will be supplied by Kai.

No It's data that user enters into the form, that's something we should store on server to send users newsletter afterward.
@fhd can you please give an insight how we should proceed with the form's data ? Should we create separate infrastructure ticket for the service which should proceed with the data ?

Where we should have a link to subscription page?

No I would like to know if we are going to have link on the landing page that links to the newsletters subscription form page, I just would like to understand how users will get to that page.

[ben]

No It's data that user enters into the form, that's something we should store on server to send users newsletter afterward.

Oh -- then I just need first name, last name and email address

No I would like to know if we are going to have link on the landing page that links to the newsletters subscription form page, I just would like to understand how users will get to that page.
At this point we are only reaching out to those who have donated to ABP. We have their email addresses because they donated, so step 1 is that I send them an email.

Step 2 is that they click a link in the email to landing page 1. Landing page 1 prefills the data (first and last name + email address) and contains a button saying "Send me the newsletter!"

Step 3 is a second email automatically after they click "Send me the newsletter!" This email just asks them to (again) confirm that they want the newsletter, with a link to Landing Page 2:

Step 4 is Landing Page , which just says thanks for subscribing.

I will deliver specific wording for each of the two landing pages and the email separately.

[saroyanm]

Oh -- then I just need first name, last name and email address

To give update on the ticket we decided to investigate whether we can use CleverReach API to send the data directly to CleverReach (the tool currently Ben uses).

[Kai]

HI example of a German Newsletter registration page ​http://www.dr-bahr.com/newsletter.html

you can just copy it, adopt it to our needs and then translate it. The last sentence (with the ISSN) is not needed.

No special terms needed.

Best
Kai

[ben]

@Kai,
This page is where people would sign up for the newsletter, which we can duplicate on our site eventually.

However, in this case we are sending an initial email to people who have donated money to us. Because we are making initial contact, ie they are not actively signing up for the newsletter in the first place, are there any other legal concerns we need to address?

[philll]

by Kai:
Damn. I delete my long comment...

so here is the short version: Contacting people to ask them to sign up on our newsletter is considered Spam in most EU countries. You can do it with US resident donators but not with the Europeans.

However, even if its Spam, the penalty is low (some thousand euro max) and the likelihood of a complaint even lower. I mean they donated to us so they should be open for such contacts.

Still - legally its spam. We should update our donations page to get their consent at that point in the future maybe.

[ben]

@saroyanm: do you have everything you need? If so, what's the status on this? If not, how can I help?

[philll]

I am actually pretty certain that this will annoy users quite a lot even in the very first attempt. I feel that this is some major communication behaviour change that we should first discuss.

[saroyanm]

Replying to ben:

@saroyanm: do you have everything you need? If so, what's the status on this? If not, how can I help?

I still need English version of the Subscription page and subscription complete page, I can only see German versions attached, also I need to create separate Sitescript ticket to use CleverReach API so you can get registrations.

@Phill: @ben is going to target the email to specific users, but I think he can tell about the target more. Anyway I also think make sense to discuss before implementing.

[trev]

The way I see it, the question about mailing users who donated to us (something I would be concerned about as well) is irrelevant here - this issue is about implementing the signup page. So whether and how we do that should be discussed separately.

There is still lots of information missing from this issue however. What should be the text of the confirmation mail? Who should be the sender of that mail? Typically, that would be ​donotreply@adblockplus.org but it probably makes sense to create eyeo.com and acceptableads.org aliases of it. Data validation is also an open question: for the email address we probably want to use the same regexp as in sitescripts/formmail/web/formmail.py, do we want to somehow validate the name as well?

Concerning form data: why do we want people to provide first and last name separately? It's easier to fill out a single name field, and that's also the common approach from all I know. Having said that, ​https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/newsletter/ doesn't even ask people for their name - do we really need it?

Finally, there is a concern: CleverReach will likely take care of the deliverability of the newsletter. However, we still have to make sure the confirmation mail is delivered, and that's something we cannot guarantee right now. Maybe it makes more sense to use a third-party service that will handle opt-in as well?

The larger part of this task will have to be handled in a sitescripts issue indeed.

[ben]

Texts for emails and structure for landing pages now done (see Google doc for details).

[ben]

Has there been any progress on this?

[juliandoucette]

This issue is "on ice" until @ben and @matze resolve the backend requirements and update this ticket.

[saroyanm]

We are usually prioritizing the issues after marking them ready.

[juliandoucette]

I'm rejecting this to get it out of my queue. Please re-open or re-create this issue by going through the appropriate channels when ready.