How to get emails with a pre-launch landing page?
Hi! I am starting to build a side project and wanted to launch a landing page to gather email addresses before I launch but I don't know how to code this.
When I launch, the people I have sent an email to should be able to create a new account with all the extra info I need. This means I can't put all the emails in the same database model User.
Do you think I should create another model just with the emails and then a User model for when I launch? Thanks a bunch
I'm surprised you're mentioning "database" in the same paragraph as "landing page" :D
Keep your landing page as simple as possible.
You can try Google forms, they have an embeddable version of the form, and every submission goes to a spreadsheet. Otherwise yes Mailchimp is the next thing I'd pick.
Hi,
If you wanted you could flag those users using a temporary link table and still store them in the User table but with placeholder content. So when the user accesses your site using a special link which identifies there e-mail via an ID from the link table - you could then prompt them for the additional info you need.
The above might be overkill as well, you could just as well store the e-mail addresses in mailchimp and treat them as new users when they register.
+1 on mailchimp (or similar) to act as your "database" for email. easier to send the "users" product/development updates (already in the email tool!) and if you want to get fancy, you can always import all of these emails in your user DB later on and have a workflow where they have to "reset their password" (or similar) to create their account (and accepts the ToS/PP).
Alternately, if you a fan of the low/no-code movement, you can do some fancy things with Zapier ==> Airtable/GoogleSheets too.
But right, you should worry about collecting early users' email addresses and get them excited about it!
You could look at MailChimp for collecting email addresses on your landing page as this has good guides for integrating into most sites. Once you site is launched you can then send an email from mail chimp to all your contacts outlining what they need to to create an account on your site