Auto reply on subscription

[rezaa1]

Hi, Is there any way we can send custom email after someone subscribed to a list.

It can be a campaign which remain active and send email as soon as someone subscribe to a list.

[jackdanielux]

If they're added to an opt in list (via API) post subscription they'll automatically receive an opt in confirmation mail.

On Sun, 11 Oct 2020, 20:10 rezaa1, notifications@github.com wrote:

Hi, Is there any way we can send custom email after they subscribed to a list.

It can be a campaign which remain active and send email as soon as someone subscribe to a list.

— You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/knadh/listmonk/issues/206, or unsubscribe https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ARESAVAD2MOZNHBHG4L4NTDSKG7U7ANCNFSM4SLZ7S6A .

[rezaa1]

Yes, but I can not customize the opt in message for each list. can I?

[knadh]

listmonk doesn't have auto-responses yet. Will explore this.

[apkd]

Dropping by to let you know that I'm also looking forward to this feature!

Specifically, ideally I'm hoping for an ability to set up a series of onboarding e-mails that new subscribers receive over a time period. For the reference, here's how it works in MailChimp.

An autoresponder is an email (or multiple emails in succession) that a user receives once they sign up to an email list or perform a certain action (such as purchasing a product). You set them up ahead of time, configure how much time should go by between each message, and then sit back and monitor your campaign’s performance.

[josephfugata]

Please. Looking forward to this as well

[nkosi23]

I think the underlying need behind this feature is broader than just auto-reply but also probably conceptually simpler. What is needed is the ability to automatically send one or more specific campaigns to new subscribers added to a list. So maybe, every list could have an optional list of campaigns that would be automatically sent to new subscribers. The transactional message feature may make implementing this simpler.

Beyond welcome messages, applications may need to send both transactional and marketing messages to users at various parts of the customer journey. Using lists is great since a single subscriber can belong to multiple lists. These basic primitives are all we would need to cover all scenarios needed by our applications.

From that point, if the upcoming multi-user feature provides us a way to conveniently group campaigns and templates, this will make it easier to localize our applications (for example by creating users for translators only having read access to the reference English campaigns and templates, and read-write access to the templates of the languages they are covering). And at that point, we are able to use listmonk to cover all the marketing and transactional messaging needs of our applications.

Not trying to hijack the thread, I just wanted to contextualize this feature.

Edit: Actually for localization, we could simply run a separate instance of listmonk for every language. Translators would need to keep a separate tab open anyway to check the reference text to translate, so there is no need to add complexity to listmonk. Maybe LDAP authentication could be introduced to ease the management of separate instances but this is a whole different topic.

[ccfiel]

Any update on this?

[ccfiel]

Any work around?

[knadh]

Apologies for the delayed reply. There is no simple workaround for this unfortunately. A really clunky way would be to run a cron job every 10 mins that checks the subscription status + updated time of subscriptions in the subscriber_lists table and then triggers a transactional mail via the /api/tx API.

[t3hmrman]

Would the idea of adding a best-effort webhook firing at certain events (subscriber addition, cancellation, etc) be possible/likely to be merged if contributed?

I could see writing a sidecar to run alongside listmonk and watch the subscribers and make this change, but it would be much easier to write that sidecar if it was just a server waiting to receive a webhook as well!

[knadh]

This isn't trivial I feel:

• Have a queue into which events are buffered.
• Each event has to carry full medata (eg: a full list object or a subscriber object) which may not be currently available in certain API calls. For example, deleting a list doesn't fetch the list currently.
• UI in admin->settings to configure one or more webhook endpoints.
• Wait/max_retry mechanism for webhook HTTP requests.

[t3hmrman]

I definitely agree that it isn't trivial, but maybe a v1 could be?

If the internal protocol is quite minimal you might be able to get away with:

• No queuing or buffering -- just a "best effort" web request. Maybe a background job or goroutine that can fail is called (best effort, if it fails, then it fails and you see a log message)
• Not every event has to be supported for hooks at first -- and the data exposed through the webhook does not necessarily have to match the full data of the action at first (I think!)
• UI is definitely hard requirement, with ENV for each supported event (something like EVENT_<event>_WEBHOOK_URL?)
• No retries? Just one chance and that's it?

I think if the protocol is at least in place, then as retries and other stuff get added it can be migration-free for downstream users (as the complexity behind the Send() method increases))

I think at this point just being able to receive any webhook (on a good day, with happy DNS/HTTP servers, a stable network, etc) would be a good pareto improvement.

[candidexmedia]

@t3hmrman : have you (or anyone) found and successfully implemented a workaround?

There is some interest in this feature on Twitter: https://twitter.com/statsandr/status/1625172227153854466?s=20

[t3hmrman]

Nope I haven't found a work around, but I haven't made a PR either -- if anyone wants to contribute a possible v1 they're free to!

@knadh is an approach like the one above something that you'd be open to?

[anaclumos]

I would also like to know if this is possible!

[Twix53791]

I confirm this feature is a must. I don't understand why it is so complicated to implement: the opt-in double option send actually emails automatically no? So why the opt-in simple process does not just follow the same process, sending an email (but a welcome email) and auto confirm the subscription behind?

[knadh]

@Twix53791 Auto-reply isn't complex but it isn't simple either. I just haven't had the time to prioritise it over other higher priority features yet, unfortunately.

• Have a new auto-reply templates section? Need the full e-mail body composing UI for this.
• Select different auto-responses for different lists (because the same auto-response will not make sense for different kinds of lists).

[ffabbr]

Any updates on this? Can we help you somehow?

[nielsmouthaan]

Ooh, not having this unfortunately prevents me from using Listmonk. Other than that, it looks great. I need it to send a series of onboarding emails. Heck, also just one email will do. It could be as simple as setting a (non-expiring) campaign as a "welcome campaign" setting on a list. I'll watch this issue and switch immediately from MailerLite to this once this gets in.

[knadh]

@nielsmouthaan would transactional e-mails suit your usecase (if you're triggering onboarding e-mails via APIs).

[peterjcarroll]

If there was a way to receive a notification of a new subscriber via a webhook, that would be helpful. Then at least I could use one of the many no-code workflow tools out there to trigger a welcome email.

[nielsmouthaan]

Exactly. Transactional email isn't the issue. It's the triggering (of the subscriber being added) that lacks.

[cloudroaminghub]

mark, need this great feature

[1avender]

Apologies for the delayed reply. There is no simple workaround for this unfortunately. A really clunky way would be to run a cron job every 10 mins that checks the subscription status + updated time of subscriptions in the subscriber_lists table and then triggers a transactional mail via the /api/tx API.

is there any such kind of workaround?

[cloudroaminghub]

Apologies for the delayed reply. There is no simple workaround for this unfortunately. A really clunky way would be to run a cron job every 10 mins that checks the subscription status + updated time of subscriptions in the subscriber_lists table and then triggers a transactional mail via the /api/tx API.

is there any such kind of workaround?

Here is a simple workaround script in centos, should add a 10 minutes job to crontab

#!/bin/bash

# Get the current time and format it as ISO 8601
current_time=$(date -u +"%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ")

# Define a threshold (e.g., 10 minutes)
time_threshold=$(date -u -d "10 minutes ago" +"%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ")

# Authentication credentials (replace with your own credentials)
tx_auth_credentials="username@password"

# Construct query parameters, including a check on created_at time range
query_params="page=1&per_page=100&query=subscribers.created_at%20>%20'$time_threshold'"

# Call the API to get the current list of subscribers
response=$(curl -u "$tx_auth_credentials" -X GET "http://localhost:9000/api/subscribers?$query_params")

# Use jq to parse the response
new_subscribers=$(echo $response | jq -r '.data.results[] | .email')

# Loop through new subscribers and send emails
for email in $new_subscribers
do
  # JSON data template
  json_data=$(cat <<EOF
{
    "subscriber_email": "$email",
    "template_id": 3,
    "data": {"order_id": "1234", "date": "2022-07-30", "items": [1, 2, 3]},
    "content_type": "html"
}
EOF
  )

  # Send the email
  curl -u "$tx_auth_credentials" "http://localhost:9000/api/tx" -X POST \
       -H 'Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8' \
       --data-binary "$json_data"
done

[cloudroaminghub]

put the temp solution here

[poblabs]

Any updates here? My use case is to send subscribers a discount coupon once they confirm their subscription. Having a 10 minute delay may be a turn off for some potential customers. I don't want to run a cron minutely either for the low volume. Having some sort of webhook, event, or maybe even MQTT pub/sub action trigger once a subscription is confirmed would be beneficial

[ffabbr]

I agree, having some sort of email automation is a must-have. It can be the most basic and developer-first approach; but still.

[poblabs]

@knadh Any consideration for this with your 3.0.0 release? #1699

Even if it's developer-forward, a way to automate new subscribers, and unsubscribers seems to be in high demand here.

[joerosenthal]

There's already a mechanism for sending an opt-in email—why not hijack that pathway to send a welcome email (an opt-in email with no opt-in button) and just mark the user as opted in automatically?

[ghostdevv]

I had to implement something like this for my clients site, for us it was to send a webhook to n8n so we can send a series of marketing emails after someone joins a list. (also had to do various other patches based on the /api/tx route to allow sending marketing emails without an attached campaign)

There's already a mechanism for sending an opt-in email—why not hijack that pathway to send a welcome email (an opt-in email with no opt-in button) and just mark the user as opted in automatically?

My implementation was based on this idea, but there are a few api endpoints which don't call this optin system so that's worth considering.

[poblabs]

This is interesting and I'd like to learn more. Currently I am experimenting with a python script that is monitoring nginx proxy logs and any POST to my list id is captured and the subscriber ID is extracted from the URL so it gets users info. Then it calls the /campaign/test api on a completed campaign attached to a 0 user list. With the payload body containing the email contents, template id, etc. A concern I have is the python script exiting without notice. So some way to get this from the core would be ideal. I have no Go experience which is why I was playing around with python

[ghostdevv]

@poblabs You can look at the code changes I made here, I also have no go experience so I stumbled my way through it xD

The webhook specific changes I made are:

• https://github.com/ghostdevv/listmonk-tweaked/commit/63585480f786983da7a9d28bf48be2fafaff009c
• https://github.com/ghostdevv/listmonk-tweaked/commit/04bfa65e9d9de168cdb11a4ade9da3e93b74e099

I've added a README to explain the changes I made in my fork, feel free to use/change. I'll only be supporting this fork as far as fixing bugs for the features we need. I hope that either listmonk adds these features (or similar enough to be usable for us) or I can find a viable alternative.

[candidexmedia]

Related, for drip campaigns: https://github.com/knadh/listmonk/issues/815

[witten]

I've got yet another work-around for this issue:

• First, I overrode Listmonk's static files. This involves downloading a copy of Listmonk's static directory (which in my case I do with Ansible's get_url, grabbing a tarball from the Listmonk releases pages), pointing Listmonk at it, and modifying one of the static files with the following hack.
• I edited the optin.html template and added something like this:

  {{ if eq .Data.Title "Confirmed" }}
  Here is the welcome content (or a link to it elsewhere) ...
  {{ end }}

  This means that content is displayed only on the subscription confirmation page when a subscription is actually confirmed.

To be clear, this approach has a bunch of downsides:

• The welcome email isn't in email! It's displayed on a web page.
• It's somewhat ephemeral by its nature (it isn't in the user's email inbox), and so they can't return to it later for reference.
• You can mitigate that somewhat by linking to content instead of including it inline in the page, but the user would still have to remember to bookmark it.
• Any content you link to isn't password-protected or otherwise gated from a user sharing the URL. However if you keep the content inline, it isn't linkable.

The upsides are:

• It's instant. The user doesn't have to wait for a ten-minute or even one-minute API poll cycle to complete for a welcome email to come in.
  • You aren't at risk of double emailing welcome emails or missing sending of welcome emails if your API polling isn't perfect.
• You don't have to use a modified version of Listmonk. (I'm not counting the custom static directory.)
• A user has to confirm their subscription before they receive the welcome content. If you instead put welcome content in the list "please confirm your subscription" email, then they could just consume the content without ever confirming their subscription.

I hope this is useful to someone! And I'll join the chorus of folks clamoring for welcome email functionality to be built into Listmonk.

[witten]

An update to the approach above. Here's what I'm doing now:

• Instead of modifying optin.html from the static files, I'm altering message.html. That way, I can display the custom info after the subscription is confirmed rather than before.. And so someone has to actually be subscribed to get the welcome content.
• I'm still doing the {{ if eq .Data.Title "Confirmed" }} trick described above, so it only displays upon subscription confirmation and not for other messages. I'm also—now hear me out—including a bit of JavaScript that parses the subscriber UUID out of the current URL. Why? Well, the subscriber UUID isn't available in the message.html template context, and I need it so that I can put a link on the message.html page that goes to...
• So, I created a draft campaign that has the welcome content. (It also works if the campaign is status "finished," but then you can't edit it if you want to make changes.) The reason I'm using a campaign for this is so that I can just use the built-in Listmonk content management UI to edit and manage this content. It's also nice to be able to email it out to any current list subscribers if you want.
• Now getting back to that message.html link. Courtesy of the aforementioned JavaScript, the link goes to the campaign "view in browser" page, the URL of which is constructed on the fly in the message.html JavaScript to go to the current subscriber's version of that campaign page.

Yes, this is total hack town. But it works pretty well! The user subscribes to the list. Once they confirm, they get a call to action link to read the welcome content they get for subscribing. They click the link and it takes them to their user-specific "view in browser" page for the welcome campaign. Would I rather have built-in welcome email functionality? Hell yeah. But for now, this appears to work.

[sspaeti]

@witten This sounds amazing and not too hacky, I'd like to try it. Thanks for taking the time to write it up. Would you mind sharing the Listmonk sign-up website, where I can see how that feels (so I know if I should start hacking or search for a workaround with other solutions)?

[witten]

The newsletter sign-up flow starts here: https://danhelfmanbooks.com/newsletter/

I'd be happy to delete your account after you try it out. Or I suppose you can just unsubscribe.