Please note that contacts and forms are available only on Marketing plans.

The Form Designer allows you to generate HTML that you can embed directly on your website. By using custom templates and redirects to welcome pages, you can effectively grow your contact list. This is a fundamental tool for expanding your email marketing efforts.

There are few steps that you need to follow to create your subscription form:

It is recommended that you create a new static list specifically for this and name it after its purpose: "Web Form Sign Ups" or "Blog Subscribers".

Create an email template specifically for this process if you wish to customize the email. Otherwise, a default template will be used.

The Template Gallery in your account has a few free examples that are easy to customize.
The {url} merge field must be used in the template. This will generate the link which will verify the contact's address and add the contact as Engaged Status to the account.

When creating your form, you can either start from scratch or choose from a gallery of pre-made form templates.

Our Form Designer allows you to build your form using available building blocks, similar to the drag-and-drop editor used for creating templates.

A specific block for forms is the "Form" block. This block is essential for the entire form, and there can only be one form block in the entire design.

To add more inputs to the form, use the "Build" tab within the block. The "Email" input cannot be deleted and is the only required field by default.

To gather more detailed information from your contacts, consider adding pre-defined fields such as "First Name" and "Last Name", or creating new custom fields.

You can also enable reCAPTCHA in your form. It will prevent spambots from adding fake email addresses to your audience. Please note that this feature is available only on Marketing PRO plans.

The "Customize" tab allows you to modify the visual aspects of your form, such as padding, background color, text size, colors, and fonts.

In the "Audience" section, you can select the lists to which a contact should be added. You can also select "Mailing Preferences", allowing users to choose which specific list they want to subscribe to.

In this section, you can manage your double opt-in confirmation. By default, it is enabled and highly recommended. This is the most effective way to ensure that your contacts have explicitly signed up for your emails and are interested in receiving communications from you.

With double opt-in, a user signs up for a newsletter by submitting their email address through the form. After submission, the user receives a separate email with a confirmation link they must click to confirm their subscription to the list.

You have the option to select a custom activation template and configure the pages displayed when the contact submits the form and after activation via email.

If no custom template is selected, a default one will be used. (IMPORTANT: The {url} merge field must be included in the template.)

If you choose to display an external website, ensure that the URL addresses begin with HTTP or HTTPS.

If you wish to be notified when a new contact is added to the list, enable the notifications in the "Notifications" section. An informational email will be sent to the specified address(es) each time a new contact is added. You can add up to 5 email addresses for these notifications.

Once your form is complete, you will find the form link to share on social media and the embedded HTML code. Copy and paste this code into your website's source code to display the form.

Congratulations! Your web form is now set up. This how it works:

When a new user fills out the form and clicks "Subscribe", the user will be taken to the web page that you specified when making the web form (Form Submit URL). This will also work for existing contacts with NotConfirmed, Transactional, Stale, Unsubscribed or Complaint status.

At the same time, in the background, the web form has made an API call to our system and added the user as a contact to your account under a 'NotConfirmed' status in the list specified when the web form was made. If double opt-in confirmation is disabled for your form, the contact will be added with an Active status.

The API call has also triggered the custom activation email to be sent to the contact.

If no Confirmation URL is specified in the web form builder, then when the contact clicks the consent link they will be redirected to a tracking page with a generic confirmation message.

If a Confirmation URL redirect is specified in the web form builder, then the user will be redirected to that web page.

In both cases, after clicking the confirmation link, the contact will become visible in the account under Engaged Status.

If the user is already subscribed, the Web Form will redirect them to the address specified in the URL Redirection for existing Contacts. We then copy that user to the list specified in your Web Form (if he was subscribed to a different one).