Can’t find customers who have opted in

[PossibleShapes]

I’ve set up contact us with opt in checkbox. But when people opt in they still show as unsubscribed. 

[Ellie_]

Hi there, @PossibleShapes,

Typically, these form submissions are sent to a section on your Square Online dashboard. Are you able to provide the link to your website, so we can take a closer look?

[PossibleShapes]

https://possibleshapes.square.site/

[Breffni · Accepted solution]

Thanks @PossibleShapes. 

With this specific Contact Us form on your website, please note that the Opt-in box is unfortunately not GDPR-compliant. This is why your customers are appearing as unsubscribed. 

You can change their status manually, but you will to obtain the customer's consent to receive this specific type of marketing from you. 

The contact form that you have won't subscribe customers to Square Marketing but rather to Mailing Lists pertaining to a legacy workflow of Weebly Promote.

Weebly Promote and Square Marketing are completely separate products. This means that if someone has opt-in to receive marketing at the checkout page on the Square Online site, you can email them through Square Marketing. However, customers who opt-in via newsletter pop-up or footer can't be emailed through Square Marketing but has to go through Weebly Promote. And Promote will not be able to email customers who have opt-in via the QR code generated by Square Marketing. The team is in the process of replacing many of Weebly Promote with Square Marketing, as Promote is not being actively developed, but this is a slow process as it does have to go through testing and many teams to ensure that everything works. But it is something that the team is working towards. We just do not have a timeline to share right now as these dates can change.

The only way to collect email addresses automatically on your Square Online website at the moment, would be to use the link you can obtain on Dashboard > Marketing > Settings. This link will prompt your customer to enter their email address to join Square Marketing. 

I hope this helps. 

[PossibleShapes]

Well no. This does not help! All its does is point out that the system offered by Square is not fit for purpose in the UK. Neither the newsletter sign-up form nor the opt-in on the contact-us form actually work do they? The is completely misleading and renders them utterly useless. Sadly I not that the answer you have given is almost identical to answers from Square that I'v see from over two years ago! It does look like Square does not really care about its its UK customers if it is still providing a misleading and dysfunctional system, without a fix, after so many years of being aware of the problem. Furthermore, the documentation does NOT make any of this clear. I have waited many many hours trying to figure out what I have done wrong (as I am sure many other people have). Extremely disappointed. 

[PossibleShapes]

Well no. This does not help! All its does is point out that the system offered by Square is not fit for purpose in the UK. Neither the newsletter sign-up form nor the opt-in on the contact-us form actually work do they? This is completely misleading and renders them utterly useless. Sadly I note that the answer you have given is almost identical to answers from Square that I've seen from over two years ago! It does look like Square does not really care about its its UK customers if it is still providing a misleading and dysfunctional system, without a fix, after so many years of being aware of the problem. Furthermore, the documentation does NOT make any of this clear. I have wasted many many hours trying to figure out what I have done wrong (as I am sure many other people have). Extremely disappointed. PLEASE LET ME KNOW: 1) HOW I CAN DO AN EFFICIENT WORKAROUND TO THIS FUNDAMENTAL FLAW IN SQUARE'S SYSTEM 2) A TIMELINE FOR WHEN SQUARE WILL FIX THESE CRITICAL ISSUES

[Breffni]

I understand your frustration @PossibleShapes, and I'm sorry for the inconvenience this has caused. There has been progress made on this front, but we don't have any updates at this time.

There was a similar post this week that may help here - you can check out Lou's response marked as Best Answer to find a couple of ways to collect email addresses with consent for marketing purposes. 

[MattArnold]

@Breffni explained it all really well, but I wanted to add a quick tip. While you can't automatically add contacts through the Contact Us form, you could consider adding a short, clear message at the top mentioning they can subscribe for updates at the link [https://squareup.com/dashboard/customers/marketing/settings].

[PossibleShapes]

I have now attempted to implement this. It appears to be a clunky and inadequate workaround that very poorly deals with a MAJOR ISSUE THAT SQUARE HAS BEEN AWARE OF FOR SINCE 2022 OR EARLIER (as can be seen by multiple discussions about this issue from 2022).

As far as I can see, the workaround that you propose seems to lead to a separate URL external to my Square website:

1) it provides no way of navigating back to my site after a user has clicked on it

2) I have no control over either the content (wording, graphics, logo etc) of the page or the response (the wording is critical)

3) I have no control over the the styling of the page or the response

4) the email input form does not allow user to paste in email address or to autofill content (this should be standard)

Please advise how to improve the user experience for point 1 above, at the very least (how user navigates back to my site).

Please also advise how and when points 2 to 4 will be improved from their current inadequate state.

[Breffni]

@PossibleShapes When your customer clicks the link, it will launch a new tab, keeping your website's main tab accessible. Customers simply need to return to the main tab after submitting their information.

I appreciate all of this valuable feedback and I would encourage you to file a feature request with the points above. Please be sure to include some details about how you'd use this in your business day-to-day - it really helps highlight why a given feature request should be prioritised.

[cymru78]

I've recently started to put a mailing list together and I was wondering why no test subscribers were showing up.

It's nice to finally find an answer!

I can't believe that this issue appears to be around 2 years long and yet it's still not been fully resolved for us in the UK.