Sign-Up Flow with the CrowdNewsroom
There are several ways for people to sign up for your newsletter or community:
Through the sign-up page of your email provider
Directly via the Membership Builder from beabee
If you don’t want to integrate payments or require members to create their own beabee account with a password, you can alternatively use the CrowdNewsroom. This allows you to collect contact details directly in your beabee database, without requiring people to set a password or access your beabee dashboard. The CrowdNewsroom can be used either as a community member sign-up or as a simple newsletter sign-up.
The CrowdNewsroom solution is particularly useful if you:
Don’t want to integrate payments into the sign-up flow,
Don’t want members to create a beabee account with a password and access the beabee dashboard,
Want to collect contact details directly in beabee instead of in your newsletter tool.
How it works:
1. Create a CrowdNewsroom
What do you want to know about your community or subscribers?
The first step is to create a CrowdNewsroom. You can find detailed instructions here. You can keep the CrowdNewsroom simple, or include questions that help you get to know your community better. For example:
Why did you join the community / subscribe to the newsletter?
Which topics interest you the most?
Which formats would you like to see?
How would you like to contribute to the community?
Do you have a network or expertise in certain areas? Or for a local focus: Which roles do you take on in our local community?
You can use the introduction text of your CrowdNewsroom to explain why you want to learn more about your contacts and, for example, link your code of conduct or community guidelines.
To make it easier to filter later in your contact database, it’s best to focus on multiple-choice questions and keep open-text fields to a minimum. Also consider how high you want the barrier to sign-up to be: Do you want only certain people to join your community/newsletter, or should access be as easy as possible? Depending on that, you can make questions optional or required.
Collecting Contact Information
Important: To collect participants’ contact information in beabee, you need to make providing contact details mandatory. You can find instructions here.
Your CrowdNewsroom will automatically include fields for first name, last name, and email address. If you want to create a simple sign-up form, you can skip adding additional questions to the CrowdNewsroom and only enable the contact information fields.
Here’s an example of what your sign-up form could look like:
If you’d like to use this template, just contact [email protected]. We’ll upload the template to your instance so you can customize it.
Tip: In the Membership Builder, you can configure the CrowdNewsroom used in the sign-up flow to be displayed in your participants’ contact profiles. This way, you can see all relevant information about your contacts at a glance. Learn more here.
2. Set Up the Newsletter Sign-Up
Whether it’s a community membership or a newsletter subscription, you should get permission from your contacts to reach out to them. To do this, enable the newsletter sign-up in the response settings of your CrowdNewsroom.
You can customize the labels for the heading, text, and checkboxes depending on whether you want to embed a newsletter sign-up or simply ask for permission to contact your users.
Newsletter Sign-Up
Stay up to date!
When you receive the newsletter, we may track (e.g., via tracking pixels or UTM parameters) when you open emails or click on links. You can withdraw your consent at any time, for example via the unsubscribe link in the newsletter. For more information, please see our Privacy Policy.
Permission to Be Contacted
May reporters contact you based on the information you’ve shared?
We want to involve our members in our reporting. This may include reaching out to you based on your expertise and experiences, so we can include your perspectives or get help from you and others. For more information, please see our Privacy Policy.
3. Set Up the Welcome Email
Even if no payment or account creation is involved in this sign-up process, you should still welcome your new members or subscribers. Technically, there are several ways to set up a welcome email:
Option 1: Sign-Up Flow Without Mailchimp Integration
If you’re using the CrowdNewsroom for a membership or newsletter sign-up and not using a Mailchimp integration, the easiest way is to use the email function within the CrowdNewsroom itself. This sends an email to everyone who participated in the CrowdNewsroom and provided their contact information. You can find more information here.
It’s best to use this email to welcome your members and explain the next steps as well as the opportunities available in your community.
Community Sign-Up
Subject: Welcome to our network!
Hi *|FNAME|*,
We’re thrilled to have you as part of [Name of the Network]. By joining, you’re helping us continue to provide independent local journalism for [Location].
From now on, we’d like to actively involve you in our work – whether by asking for your opinions, suggestions for topics, or tips for our research.
From time to time, we’ll send you emails with invitations and news from our editorial team. You can unsubscribe from these emails at any time.
If you have any questions, suggestions, or feedback, feel free to reach out to us at [email address].
Best regards, [Name of Editor-in-Chief / Community Management]
Newsletter Sign-Up
Subject: Welcome!
Hi [First Name],
We’re excited to have you on board! From now on, this newsletter will bring you all the latest news from [Location], event tips, and carefully researched stories. It’s sent [Newsletter frequency], so you won’t miss a thing.
In case we haven’t met yet:
I’m [Author], and I lead the community at [Organization Name] / founded [Organization Name]. Before this, I spent many years [brief description of experience], and my role here is [briefly describe responsibilities].
If you have feedback, suggestions, or questions, feel free to reach out at [email address] – we’re happy to hear from you!
To get you started, here’s the most popular edition of our newsletter so far. In it, you’ll find [short teaser about the edition]. Enjoy reading!
Talk soon, [Author Name]
Option 2: Sign-Up Flow with Mailchimp Integration
If you’ve embedded a Mailchimp integration in the CrowdNewsroom, you can also use the CrowdNewsroom email. However, this email will be sent even if participants haven’t confirmed their email address via double opt-in. This is why a second option is recommended: automated emails via Mailchimp.
Automated emails via Mailchimp are only sent if participants have confirmed their email address and completed the sign-up process. You can find more information here.
Instead of sending a single welcome email, you can also send a full series of onboarding emails, gradually onboarding new members to your community or welcoming them as subscribers to your newsletter. For example, CORRECTIV.StartHub sends five emails over ten days, introducing various activities, knowledge resources, and participation opportunities in the community.
Since the connection between Mailchimp and the CrowdNewsroom works via Mailchimp groups, it’s best to set the automation trigger so that it activates when a contact joins the corresponding group (the one linked in the CrowdNewsroom). This way, you can create different onboarding flows for different newsletters.
You can find more information on how to set up an automation here.
4. Embed the CrowdNewsroom on Your Join Page
In the final step, all you need to do is embed the link to your CrowdNewsroom on your website. You can either link it to a button or integrate it directly into your page. Ideally, combine this with a clear call-to-action, such as “Join the community – sign up now” or “Stay up to date – subscribe to the newsletter now”.
If you have any questions or run into issues while setting up your sign-up flow, feel free to contact [email protected].
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