User Field Shortcodes and Dynamic Thank-You Pages from Arigato PRO 2.7.4

From version 2.7.4 Arigato PRO supports shortcodes that will display information from selected subscriber’s profile on a page on your site.
The most common scenario to use this is to create a dynamic thank-you page which is prepopulated with subscriber’s data and shown to them right after subscribing or after email confirmation. In order to make this work we have also added an option to automatically prepend user ID when doing redirects. Read on to learn how to use all this:

Using The Shortcodes

Use the shortcode in the following format:

[bftpro-user-field field="field_name" default="Default value"]

This format expects that user ID will be sent in the URL as argument called “arigatopro_id“. This can happen automatically after registration as explained in the second part of this article. If you are using some other configuration you may need to take care for prepending the user ID yourself. An alternative to this is to add the shortcode parameter “user_id” in the shortcode like this: Default value

Where does the field name come from? There are four fields presented in every mailing list: name, email, ip, date. Use the names exactly as shown here. You can also include custom fields the same way – just pass the field name (not label) to the “field” parameter.

Here is the how the thank you page that you get after signing up for our demo list is done:

thankyou

Using default values is recommended because someone could be visiting your page without the proper URL parameter.

Prepend Subscriber ID On Redirect

To make using the above shortcodes simple we have added a new option on the Add / Edit Mailing List page next to both redirects:

prepend

This way you can be sure the ID is passed and can make a page like the one from the example in the previous section yourself.

Prepend Subscriber ID in Trackable Links (Intelligence Module)

From version 1.1.6 the trackable links in the Intelligence module support the same feature. You can have subscriber ID added to the end of the URL. This is most useful if your target URL is a page with shortcodes like the above example but you can also use it to redirect to a page with custom shortcodes. The attribute name that holds the subscriber ID is called “arigatopro_id”.

Important!

This is not meant to be extremely secure. Although from version 3.0.8.5 of Arigato PRO we have added a hash parameter in the URL making it impossible to guess someone else’s combination, browsers may keep these URLs in history. Don’t expose sensitive personal data via these shortcodes. The purpose of this is simply to greet the user in more personalized manner. If you need to use user profiles you’d better use the feature “When user subscribes to this mailing lists, register them as subscriber for my site too” so users get real accounts with passwords.

Arigato PRO and Cron Jobs

Some customers of of the drip marketing suite Arigato PRO can’t run cron jobs on their servers for one or another reason. But this is not reason to worry:

Arigato Pro does not require cron jobs to send scheduled emails. We just recommend setting up cron jobs because this method is more reliable and less resource intensive. If for some reason you can’t set up cron jobs, there are alternatives:

a) Use the option “I will rely on my blog visitors to initiate the email sending”. You’ll find it on the Arigato Pro Settings page:

no-cron-jobs

b) Use some of the many web based cron job services. For example this one is free, and there are many more free or very reasonably priced ones. Do a search for “web cron jobs” and choose a service you like.

Saying all this, please have in mind that cron jobs are not some kind of luxury or high-tech service. They are provided even by the cheapest web hosts. If your hosting service cannot provide such basic feature you should probably consider changing it.

Arigato PRO 2.7

Version 2.7 of the WordPress drip marketing suite Arigato PRO has been released. Highlights between versions 2.6 and 2.7:

  • Added report by email domain for newsletter and autoresponder message reports.
  • Added option to manually move subscribers from one mailing list to another.
  • Added server-side email validation for cases when the JS validation is skipped.
  • Added filter by signup date on the Manage Subscribers page.
  • Now you can pause autoresponder messages. Pausing is like deleting them: they will not be sent accordingly to the schedule. But instead of deleting you just pause and can re-activate them at any time.
  • Blacklist management is available: you can specify email addresses and IP addresses that will not be allowed to sign up for the mailing lists. You can also use wildcards to mark one or more characters.
  • You can now configure the content of the new member signup notification email sent to admin.
  • Implemented version 2 of Google’s reCaptcha (“No captcha reCaptcha”). You can use either version but we strongly recommend version 2.
  • Added variable {{list-name}} for newsletters and autoresponder messages. Will be replaced with the name of the user’s mailing list.
  • The “placeholder” attribute can be added to shortcodes of text fields and simple textareas to generate a HTML placeholder. Example: [bftpro-field-static name placeholder=”Your name”].
  • You can now specify different email address to receive your test messages (in “Send test” feature for newsletters and autoresponder emails).
  • Further improvements done to prevent sending duplicate emails (such issue has happened to a small number of users).
  • Fixed bugs with presets and sending test emails with them.
  • Fixed bugs with custom fields (checkboxes) when used in Filter / search subscribers.

As usual, the latest version is sent by newsletter to eligible subscribers. If you have not received it, feel free to send us email. If your free upgrades subscription has expired, you can renew with 60% discount.