Simple sign up problems

Options
2»

Comments

  • Shana Masterson
    Shana Masterson ✭
    Ancient Membership Facilitator 1 Photogenic
    Kent Gilliam:

    Shana,

    Here are your answers:

    Just to confirm: If I have a survey with a hidden interest update (for example, in my site wrapper we have an eNews sign up form, with a hidden interest update for enews), does that also mean that they are being opted into eNews, but opted out of everything else? It certainly sounds like that is the case, which again is a horrible rationale for Convio to use when determining opt outs.

    No. That's not the case here. This is only happening when multiple interest opt-ins are being presented and not being checked. So if you are not presenting the other options in your sign-up form it is not opting anyone out of your other interests.

    After the initial first, last, email survey, people are taken to another survey with all of the interests listed out where they can choose other options. Some fill this form out, but many do not, and either way people are being opted out of things they didn't intend to opt out of, unless they fill out the first form and then check off every interest box on the second form.

    In your statement, "either way people are being opted out" is not correct. Change would only happen if a constituent provided into on the follow-up form and the consituent clicked "submit". If they do not mess with the form then there is no change to someone who just opted in to your enews group on the homepage form. In your case, after completing the survey/form on the homepage with the hidden enews opt-in and being redirected to the follow-up form, if the person provides additional information but does not select the "Enews' opt-in again then it would opt the person out of the "enews opt-in" group. Just to be clear, it does NOT put the person in the "opt-out" interest group. It simply puts them in the neutral state.

    Casey will have to answer any questions about changing this.

    Kent

    Thanks, Kent! That was extremely helpful information. Is there any way we could have a quick conference call about this to better answer my/our questions?

    Thanks again!

    Shana

  • Casey Flinn
    Casey Flinn ✭
    Ancient Membership Facilitator 1
    Jan Fischer Bachman:

    Hi Casey!

    Our specific examples involve "simple sign-ups" - which are great for getting interested eyeballs on communications, but harder to manage in terms of database. For a simple sign-up, there is no way for a person to see which interests they have already chosen/rejected/taken no action on. They just enter their e-mail address and check publications they want. This has some downfalls - we don't get a name (which can make working with records difficult - we call ours "friend friend" so that they will be "Dear friend" if anyone personalizes!) AND it creates lots of duplicates since we allow multiple records with the same e-mail address.

    Of course it is "better" for them to log in and see a list of what they have chosen. But this defeats the purpose of a simple sign-up! Our organization is getting WAY more new subscibers with the simple system than with the previous "you must log in to indicate your interests" scenario.

    So the really relevant point is: if someone simply does not check a box, it should not be considered an "opt-out." It would be a little silly to have check boxes for "want this publication" "don't want" "neutral" so I think it makes sense to assume a neutral status unless otherwise indicated.

    We had a case today of someone who previously got our main news publication. He signed up for two additional newsletters yesterday. That opted him out of the main news publication. So, does he want it or not? Did he assume that he was already on the list so didn't need to check it again? Or is he tired of news?  I e-mailed him to find out. But we really do not have time for a personal connection with every person!

    The exact option you mention (not overriding an existing status) only works where multiple profiles with the same e-mail are not allowed. In our case (and many others, I understand), a simple signup will always generate a brand new profile. We merge these in asap, but would like to NOT have the opt-outs to deal with.

    Overall, I would say Convio needs to get on board the simple sign-up train, since there is also a problem with overall e-mail opt-in and opt-outs. We shouldn't have to put an opt-in box on a simple e-mail signup since people are signing up because they want to opt in! (We spent a while accidentally having everyone who signs up ending up opted out of all e-mail. Now we have a dumb message about opting in until I have time to put in the code to suppress the box altogether). This is such a basic need that it would be great to have a better option rather than having to insert special code.

    Thanks for looking at the issue! I really appreciate the way Convio constantly keeps updating and improving!

    Jan,

    Thanks for this additional information.

    so when i look at your simple signup page: http://support.brethren.org/site/PageServer?pagename=signup2

    - these are interests groups, correct?

    - lets say you get cflinn@convio.com to sign up for 3 different interests over 3 different occasions. you then merge duplicates and the merged account inherits all the optins, correct?

    Casey Flinn

    Convio Product Managment

  • Jan Fischer Bachman
    Jan Fischer Bachman ✭
    Ancient Membership Facilitator 1
    Casey Flinn:

    Jan,

    Thanks for this additional information.

    so when i look at your simple signup page: http://support.brethren.org/site/PageServer?pagename=signup2

    - these are interests groups, correct?

    - lets say you get cflinn@convio.com to sign up for 3 different interests over 3 different occasions. you then merge duplicates and the merged account inherits all the optins, correct?

    Casey Flinn

    Convio Product Managment

    Casey, sorry, I missed your message.

    No, the interests do not merge in, because we allow multiple accounts with the same e-mail address. (This policy pre-dates me and reflects couples and families sharing e-mail addresses). We hend up with duplicate records. When you merge in a duplicate record, the preferences of the master record are maintained where they conflict. So the opt-outs of the master record are saved.

    We know this... now. But before that we probably cancelled out most of the selections people made! That's one reason it would be really nice for a "non-select" to equal nothing rather than a strong opt-out.

    I also just found out that removing someone from an opt-out group does not work. Convio will put them back in unless you go to "e-mail preferences" and "unsubscribe" them from the group. So now we know that we have a bunch of people we've opted in or opted out using the opt-in and outs for interests and Convio has negated that. (We found out after removing someone from the opt-out group for the third time and it not sticking).

    There are sure a lot of ways to make mistakes when trying to honor people's preferences! I'm sure that's why my predecessor required people to log in and edit interests. However, we have gotten hundreds more responses by having a simpler signup. We just probably haven't gotten many of them into the right interest groups!

    Thanks for looking at this!

    All the best,

    Jan

    P.S. We just changed to CMS and have a two-step sign up from our home page, www.brethren.org - first step gets them into the system and then they can choose interests or not. If they don't use the second survey, nothing happens. The only risk is the fact that we don't have a way to make sure they log out after the second survey (whether completing or not). They don't know they are logged in, so they're not going to hit a "log out" button. If another person then uses the computer, the interests could end up on the wrong profile. However, fingers crossed that it would only occur in rare cases (and I see all these signups via e-mail, so should be able to sort them out).

  • Anne Pogoriler 2
    Anne Pogoriler 2 ✭
    Ancient Membership First Reply

    We've totally experienced this, as well, and it's caused huge problems for us that I'm pretty sure we still haven't sorted out -- people see a list of interest options, and if they sign up for a couple of them in a simple sign up form, they get opted out of everything else, even stuff they may have previously been signed up for.

    REALLY would prefer the system doesn't work that way (leaves blank check-box options NEUTRAL, not OPT-OUT), so just wanted to weigh in and hope to hear about chances to Convio that would address this.

    Thanks!

  • Casey Flinn
    Casey Flinn ✭
    Ancient Membership Facilitator 1
    Anne Pogoriler:

    We've totally experienced this, as well, and it's caused huge problems for us that I'm pretty sure we still haven't sorted out -- people see a list of interest options, and if they sign up for a couple of them in a simple sign up form, they get opted out of everything else, even stuff they may have previously been signed up for.

    REALLY would prefer the system doesn't work that way (leaves blank check-box options NEUTRAL, not OPT-OUT), so just wanted to weigh in and hope to hear about chances to Convio that would address this.

    Thanks!

    Ann, Jan, and the rest

    From a roadmap perspective we are looking at an overall better solution for interest managment that spans both online and offline communication channel preferences.

    However for the short term I am going to investigate the idea of changing the logic on a quick registration form where a blank check box does not update the email interest preference.

    This would have the following implications:

    1) the only way to opt out of an email would be to either use the opt out link in the email that gets sent and/or log into their profile and manage their email interests there.

    2) using interests for quick registration only allows opt-in. this would mean that for clients using a quick registration form for interests you would need to provide instructions on how where to opt out.

    Thoughts?

    Thanks,

    Casey

  • Shana Masterson
    Shana Masterson ✭
    Ancient Membership Facilitator 1 Photogenic
    Casey Flinn:

    Ann, Jan, and the rest

    From a roadmap perspective we are looking at an overall better solution for interest managment that spans both online and offline communication channel preferences.

    However for the short term I am going to investigate the idea of changing the logic on a quick registration form where a blank check box does not update the email interest preference.

    This would have the following implications:

    1) the only way to opt out of an email would be to either use the opt out link in the email that gets sent and/or log into their profile and manage their email interests there.

    2) using interests for quick registration only allows opt-in. this would mean that for clients using a quick registration form for interests you would need to provide instructions on how where to opt out.

    Thoughts?

    Thanks,

    Casey

    Hi Casey,

    These ideas sound great! Thanks again for all of the work you've put into this on our behalf.

    Also, we've implemented the new email subscription profile page as you recommended and it is working out much better than the original. Great suggestion.

    Take care,

    Shana

  • Jan Fischer Bachman
    Jan Fischer Bachman ✭
    Ancient Membership Facilitator 1
    Casey Flinn:

    Ann, Jan, and the rest

    From a roadmap perspective we are looking at an overall better solution for interest managment that spans both online and offline communication channel preferences.

    However for the short term I am going to investigate the idea of changing the logic on a quick registration form where a blank check box does not update the email interest preference.

    This would have the following implications:

    1) the only way to opt out of an email would be to either use the opt out link in the email that gets sent and/or log into their profile and manage their email interests there.

    2) using interests for quick registration only allows opt-in. this would mean that for clients using a quick registration form for interests you would need to provide instructions on how where to opt out.

    Thoughts?

    Thanks,

    Casey

    In a highly ironic development, I suddenly need a simple way to opt people out of two interests.

    Here's the situation:

    One of our staffers is half-time, the other half belonging to a different (but related) organization. He got permission to require registration to download a set of study papers so that he could set up an e-mail group connected with that organization. Ideally we do NOT want to send our default publications to this group. However, I also do not want to automatically opt out anyone who uses this sign up since some of them could be our members.

    So I was going to solve the problem by including the following:

    When you submit your e-mail address, you will automatically receive the Church of the Brethren's Newsline and eBrethren e-mail publications. If you prefer not to receive these publications, please leave the following boxes unchecked.

    NewslineeBrethren newsletter

    Then I realized that this would no longer work, given the changes we have been suggesting!

    So... have the opt-in boxes changed yet or what is the scheduled date for that?

    (Perhaps I could use this until then).

    If the change has taken place, I will probably choose to exclude this group from our main two mailings on the theory that MOST of them would not be our members. I don't want to ask these folks to go in and edit their profiles, because they do not need the hassle of a long list of interests to deal with. They are signing up for a single issue publication. 

    Just shows - there are so many different needs in different situations that it can be tricky to accommodate them all!

    All the best,

    Jan

Categories