List Assignments, Email Capture and a Whole Lotta Awesome
If you have multiple email lists within your Constant Contact account, you need a way for your email recipients to select what lists they’d like to belong to. If someone only wants to hear about your upcoming events and could do without any product update emails, we’ve made it easy for you to do that with our new list assignment feature. (Constant Contact has some upcoming webinars on how to build better lists, if you need help managing those.)
Now, if you’re already a list master and have narrowed down some of your segments, then you’re ready to use your Formstack form to capture those emails and divide them accordingly. In this post, I’ll break down the step-by-step process of how to get this list assignment feature setup in your form. In this case, I’ll walk you through how to do that in a donation form.
So say I have a foundation creatively dubbed, “Breena’s Awesome Charity.” (Original, right?)
I’m already a Constant Contact user, so below you can see all the lists I’ve created within my account. Pretty standard, I’d say.
Now, say I recently hosted a huge fundraising event and had donation kiosks set up where people could go to my Formstack donation form on a computer and enter their name, email address, payment information, etc. and were able to donate to my charity live at the event. (Awesome, right?) That’s all well and good in the moment, but I want to be able to communicate with those people in the future. But in order to keep them interested, I don’t want to bombard them with unwanted emails. I have to make sure I send them information they actually want. So what do I do?
I give them a choice of list assignments.
And here’s how I do it.
Step 1: Create a (in this case – donation) Form
First, I created a donation form with our handy Formstack Donation Field Guide. I added a Name, Email, and Number – aka “Donation Amount” – field to my form. Then, I created a Checkbox Field with all of my email lists in my Constant Contact account. (Note: It is VERY important that you type these email lists verbatim. It will not pull those emails over if it cannot recognize a match.)
See how these match the first picture of my Constant Contact lists? Do that.
Step 2: Edit “List Assignment” settings.
Next, I’ll go into my “Settings” tab within that donation form. Within my Constant Contact integration details, I’ll scroll all the way to the bottom where it says “List Assignment.” Because I want my donors to select the lists, I’ll make sure that’s the option I choose. (See below.)
Step 3: Select Field.
Once I’ve selected the “Allow the lists to be selected on the form” option, it’ll prompt me to pick the field. This will be the Checkbox field I set up in Step 1. Once you’ve selected the correct field, click “Save Settings” and you’ll be ready to go!
Step 4: Share your Form. Collect those emails. Send away!
My beautiful donation form is set up. My awesome charity event went great because lots of people gave money through my donation form. And since I had a payment integration set up, I didn’t even have to worry about managing any of it. Oh, and NOW I have the donor email addresses and interests so I can contact them in the future!
Life is good, people. Life. is. good.
Now, let’s see you do the same! If you have any questions on our list assignment feature with Constant Contact, please post a comment below or reach out to us via Twitter. And if you need help with email list management, be sure to check out Constant Contact’s useful tips!
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About the Author
Breena (@beefain) is the PR and marketing specialist at Formstack. She oversees media relations, social media, and content strategy. She graduated with a Bachelors of Arts in Journalism degree from Indiana University. When she's not spending her time bragging about how sweet Formstack is, she's usually drooling over fashion sites, writing, or going to shows... and probably eating.
I just donated to Breena’s Awesome Charity, which as you all know provides certified love to children living in Nowherestan.
Hi, just wanted to mention, I enjoyed this article.
It was practical. Keep on posting!