Newsletter subscribe page

Contacts & Mailingcontactssubscribemailing4 min read

Every contact group is also a mailing list. Three ways to grow it from outside FastLinkIt: a hosted public signup page, an embeddable widget, and a direct iframe.

The slug

Groups created after this feature shipped get an auto-derived slug — a short, URL-safe identifier based on the group name. "Weekly tips" becomes weekly-tips. On collision (someone else picked the same slug platform-wide), the new group gets weekly-tips-2, -3, and so on, so the public URL always resolves deterministically.

Groups created before this feature have an empty slug. Re-saving them in the editor regenerates the slug from the name; until then, the public URL falls back to the group's GUID.

The hosted page

Every group has a public signup page at:

https://flnk.it/subscribe/{slug}

Clean two-field form (email required, name optional). On submit the visitor's email becomes a contact in the group's owner's list with the source tag source:subscribe:{slug} — same convention as the JS subscribe widget so contacts arriving via either path share the same provenance. Already-a-member submissions are idempotent (no duplicate membership row).

Use cases:

QR code on a printed flyer pointing at flnk.it/subscribe/weekly-tips.
Email signature link.
Social-bio link (Instagram, X, LinkedIn).
Buttons / CTAs in any host page.

On /contacts/groups, each row has a green share-icon button that opens a modal with three tabs:

1. Public page

The https://flnk.it/subscribe/{slug} URL, ready to copy. Shareable verbatim anywhere.

2. Script tag

A single <script> line that mounts the embeddable subscribe widget on any third-party site:

<script src="https://flnk.it/js/subscribe-widget.js" data-group="<group-id>"></script>

The widget posts to /api/subscribe directly (no iframe). Reads data-group (required), data-theme="light|dark", data-button-text, data-success-message, data-show-name="true|false", data-email-placeholder, data-name-placeholder, and data-mount="#css-selector" from its own script tag. Inline-styled so the host's CSS can't fight it.

3. Iframe

For sites whose Content-Security-Policy blocks third-party scripts. Renders the same hosted signup page inside a fixed-height frame. Same form, no auto-resize.

A copy button on the modal grabs whichever tab's snippet is active.

Auto-add via mailing-tracked links

When you send a mailing campaign that contains a form link or subscribe link, the click-tracking redirect automatically appends ?r={recipient-token} to URLs whose path is /form/{shortcode} or /subscribe/{slug}. The destination page resolves the token to the original recipient's email so the submission gets stamped with their identity even if they don't fill in any email field. Authors don't have to template anything — just drop the link in the mailing body.

Privacy: opt out of identity capture

Forms have a per-form Collect submitter identity toggle on the editor. When off, the submission flow skips:

Tracked mailing-recipient resolution (the ?r= token is ignored).
Schema-driven email/name extraction.
Auto contact upsert.
Submitter confirmation email path.

The submission row still gets stored, but it stays anonymous. Useful for genuinely-anonymous feedback forms or whistleblower channels. The toggle is on by default for backwards compatibility — existing forms keep capturing identity.

Worked example

Create a contact group at /contacts/groups named "Newsletter". Auto-slug becomes newsletter.
Click the green share icon on the row, copy the Public page URL: https://flnk.it/subscribe/newsletter.
Stick that URL behind a button on your homepage, in your email signature, or as a QR code on your business card.
Visitors who fill the form land in your Newsletter contact group, tagged source:subscribe:newsletter.
Wire a drip campaign with trigger group_added + value = the group ID, or tag_added + value = source:subscribe:newsletter. Welcome email fires within seconds of signup.

Contact Groups — managing groups + members
Subscribe Forms — deeper docs on the embeddable widget itself
Forms — richer forms with multiple field types and full Survey runtime
Drip campaigns — what to send subscribers automatically