New Member Sign Up Newsletter Preferences Bug

Bugs
1

We have an urgent matter that needs attention.

Over the last few months, I’ve seen a large number of cancellations. After investigating, I discovered that when members sign up and select the newsletters they want to receive, those choices aren’t being saved. Only the newsletters that are automatically opted in are sticking.

I have several newsletters, and I assumed everything was working. Recently, I noticed many members only received the welcome email—no other newsletters. I tested this by signing up myself and discovered that no matter what you choose during sign-up, it doesn’t save your preferences. Members didn’t know this, and I didn’t know either.

Because of this glitch, the free trial experience fell short of what was promised, and resulted in a massive number of cancels and that’s what brought this to my attention. I looked at the data and realized it’s been happening since January 14th. Everyone who joined after that date has zero emails sent, and I sent lots of emails.

If you go into your account after signup, and re-choose your selections they will save then, but nothing is being saved from the automated process at sign up.

I’m now planning to email all affected members and let them know they need to pick their newsletters again. Unfortunately, I can’t recover all those cancels, but what’s most concerning to me is how has no one noticed this and it’s being going on for 1.5 months?

I’m not sure how your tech stack is set up, and maybe only some of your website owners are having this bug, and maybe that’s why no one has noticed. This is an urgent manner for me, it may not be for others, but due to how my process is set up, this is going to be a nightmare until it’s resolved.

Thank you.

Steps to Reproduce

  1. Just sign up, and select any newsletters
  2. You will then noticed nothing was saved other than newsletters we auto opt them into without their selection.
  3. You will also notice it will finally save the settings when you manually go back into a member account and reselect the choices you made at sign up.

Ghost Version
I am a Ghost Pro member, I don’t know what version, because everything is fully managed by you

2

@The_Jetsetter_Cheap , while this is definitely of interest on the forum, the best way to get results from the Ghost Pro team is to email them directly - at support@ghost.org

I’m leaving this thread open, because I’m sure other publishers will want to check their records for any similar issues, but please send the Ghost Pro team an email!

3

That’s what I figured as well, but when I looked into things the information I was reading was telling me I should report it here, but I will email them now.

4

I spoke to Ghost support, and they confirmed the bug. So thanks for sending me that way Cathy.

They have support looking into it now. Unsure just yet if it’s only me, or lots of us, but they have their IT team looking into it.

This issue is only at sign up, and is only a bug when you ask new members to select the newsletters they wish to receive emails for at sign up. If they choose them later it will recognize their choices and save them. The only selections that are being saved at sign up is newsletters that we auto opt them in for.

I’ll report back when they let me know more.

5

Interesting, you triggered my attention and I tried to do another thing.

On my ghost ( Version: [5.115.0]) I have the first newsletter auto opt-in and the second is off.

I just tried to subscribe and intentionally disable the auto opt-in newsletter. So it’s the same as creating an account in Ghost website without ANY active newsletter.

Well guess what? Upon email confirmation I was still subscribed to the auto opt-in newsletter, so my choice was not registered.

1 Like
6

Hmm – I decided to try to replicate this problem.

I signed up under an unused email, and I got the normal “Secure sign-in link” email rather than the “Complete your signup” email. I checked, and the newsletter choices I had made were not saved. Also, I was not taken to the “Welcome” page like I should have been.

So, I deleted that membership, and went through it all again twice, using both Safari and Chrome. Both of those attempts worked correctly.

Anyone else seeing this?

1 Like
7

Yeah, It cost me thousands in wasted ad spend + the all canceled and I don’t blame them. They didn’t receive even 1 newsletter.

8

I didn’t even notice the not being taken to the welcome page thing, that’ why it was so bad then for me. Because had they been taken to the welcome pages they would of seen the message to double check their newsletter settings that they are in fact how they would like them, and it also explained a lot more about he service and what they can expect during their trial.

I know the newsletter selection issue has been resolved, at least for me. The welcome pages I will have to check and make sure they are being taken to those because when I contracted support to bring this to their attention I did not mention anything about the welcome page issue so they might not even know there was a bug there as well. Can you confirm that it’s working as it should of your end now?