If a reader signs up as a free member they receive a ‘validate your email’ link … if, by chance, they mistype their email then they never receive the validation mail and so ‘know’ something is wrong and sign up again.
However, if they are new readers and sign up directly for a paid membership then they are handed off to Stripe for processing. Their email details are then somehow handed back to Ghost and they subsequently get sent the validation email.
However, if they mistyped their email in Stripe this incorrect address is entered into both Stripe and Ghost, and they never receive the validation email … or any subsequent paid for content. They also cannot sign-in. However, they have paid.
Is there a solution to this? A small percentage (~2%) of my paid sign-ups get their email address wrong - typically xyz.co.uk where it should be xyz.com - and it necessitates monitoring all failed emails.
But then how do you contact the paying reader? Some are guessable, others are not. I’ve even resorted to sending a letter to the Stripe-registered snail mail address.
It’s worth noting that if you do find the correct address, I think it needs to be fixed in Stripe and Ghost for newsletter receipt and membership renewals.
Yes, it’s the reader’s responsibility to get their email address correct, but it looks very unprofessional and takes time to resolve …
Double opt-in would perhaps solve this or perhaps just an additional sanity checking “If you don’t receive an email … blah blah” message somewhere.
My Ghost is hosted on MagicPages and I’ve discussed this with Jannis. He doesn’t think this is related to his use of Amazon SES in place of Mailgun.
Any thoughts?
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