Hi, any suggestions for a simple mechanism to capture a reaction or like/dont like feedback in the emails for each new post. I just want a simple yes/no reaction with 2 buttons at the end of the email, in other words, I’m not looking for a paid platform with a monthly subscription, just a way to capture feedback. Any suggestions?
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There are some paid solutions (like Hotjar, or Sprig) but these usually require adding a script to your site, and of course come with a subscription.
Here’s an idea that you could implement within Ghost:
- Make 3 pages. All they need to say is “Thanks for the feedback!”
- In your posts make 3 links to those pages, for example,
/hated-/fine-/loved - Then use website analytics (we recommend Plausible), to see traffic to each page as a measure of votes on any particular day.
Bonus tip: Add a form embed to all 3 pages saying “Anything else we should know?” - so people can optionally send additional feedback.
Another bonus tip: You can also add UTM parameters to see which posts people voted from. These can be added dynamically in your theme for posts, or manually in emails. For example: /loved?utm_source=articleidentifier
Yet another bonus tip: If you create a snippet for your “Did you enjoy this email?” setup, you won’t need to write it out for each email. All you’ll need to do is insert the snippet (and optionally, update the UTM params).
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thank you Kym, great tip, i will do that
i have one question…what is UTM?
UTM parameters are text codes that you add to the end of a URL to help you track the performance of webpage or campaign.
In this example, you’re adding UTM parameters to the end of your /hated - /fine - /loved voting links at the bottom of your email. That way, you’ll be able to see which emails people were reading when they clicked one of these links in your website analytics tool.
Here’s a tool that can help you build campaign URLs: https://ga-dev-tools.web.app/campaign-url-builder/
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Got it…thank you, that is super helpful
Let us know how you get on with your voting system :D
Have you guys tried https://pirsch.io/ ? They offer a 60 day trial/100K views for free to test it out. Not sure if its better/faster than Plausible.
Thanks, I havnt seen them, will take a look
The solution that Kym suggested works ok…it’s very simple and easy to set up, especially when you are small scale and getting started
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For context, Ghost implemented “Audience Recreations” as a native feature about a year later.
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Helli! There are plans for adding it to blog posts and/or pages?
Reaction buttons in emails fulfill a need in emails where there is a lack of detailed analytics due to a lack of JavaScript. They are imperfect because they only collect reactions from people who use them.
On the web, analytics software like Matomo already offers a range of ways to gauge user engagement across all users, not only ones who click buttons. For example, you can take how long a user spent reading a post and bounce rates.
For this reason, the same buttons on the web may be clutter than a useful analytics or engagement tracking tool.
You could likely also build your own without much effort if you already use Analytics software that tracks clicks.
I’m building a little tool called PollKit that you can use to collect reactions. It’s mostly aimed at email polls but you can also paste polls into web pages as emoji reactions.
It’s still in beta but you can sign up to try it out.
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Thanks! It’s so expensive for me but I will try to find something open-sourced 
BTW the official functionality is more useful on blog posts and it can be used too on newsletters like the post content.
Analytics is not the same as “like, not like it”. They are similar to claps on Medium.