Using Direct Add and a Manage Preferences Webform to Add Contacts and Their Preferences

A common use case for using direct add is to add contacts to your account and subsequently allow them to manage their message preferences and provide more information about themselves.

Procedure

Go to Settings > Platform Settings > Data Exchange.
Check the Enable Direct Add for adding new contacts box.
Check the Send a welcome message box.
The welcome message will contain a cookie that is used to identify the contact. This cookie tells the message you select below (in this example, a Manage Preferences webform) which contact you are dealing with.
Select the welcome message to send using the message picker.
For the purpose of this example, you will want to make sure you choose a message that contains a clearly defined link to a Manage Preferences webform.
Add a from name in the From Name text box.
Add a from address in the From Address text box.
Copy the generated Direct Add img tag and add it to a page on your site.
The settings you selected above are used to dynamically generate a Direct Add img tag that you can copy and use on your site. The settings you select will not be saved when you leave the Data Exchange page.
Warning: If you are using a private domain and also use https, you need to set the start of your src value to be https://app.bronto.com:
- Change the URL in the Direct Add img tag src attribute to use https.
- Change the domain in the Direct Add img tag src attribute to app.bronto.com.

What to do next

To summarize what is going on in this process, a person accesses a page on your site containing the Direct Add img tag. The information the person adds (email address, field data), along with the list ID you specified in the img tag, is passed back to your account. The person is added to your account (making them a contact) and the welcome message you specified above is sent to the contact. The welcome message contains a cookie that holds data (a contact ID) that identifies the contact and a link to a Manage Preferences webform. The contact then fills out the Manage Preferences webform and their preference information is passed back to the application when they submit the form. The application knows whose preferences to modify/change based on the identifying contact information contained in the cookie. Below is an image depicting a visual representation of the process described here: