Send a greeting when someone fills in a form
Someone fills in your waiting list form and ticks the box asking to hear more. What happens in the next five minutes decides whether that tick ever becomes permission to email them - and this is the setting that controls it.
The prompt
“Turn on the greeting for my [waiting list / downloads / enquiry / registration] form and write it in my voice: [what you'd want a brand-new sign-up to read first].”
Signed in, Get my prompt fills in your site for you. Otherwise press Copy and fill in the [bracketed] parts. First time? Connect your AI to bernard once: Use your own AI (opens in a new tab).
What the greeting is
It's the automatic reply a form sends the instant someone submits it having ticked a marketing consent box. There's one for each kind of form bernard knows about - a waiting list, a downloads-and-leads form, an enquiry form, a registration - not one per individual form, so if you have several waiting lists on your site, they all use the same greeting.
Write it however you'd greet someone by hand: a line or two saying thanks and what to expect. Underneath your words, bernard adds a fixed "Yes, keep me posted" button. That part is never yours to write - it's the one honest signal that turns a tick on a form into a real yes, and it has to look and behave the same everywhere so nobody wonders whether pressing it means anything.
Why the button matters more than the words
A form can be filled in by anyone, including someone typing in a stranger's address by mistake. The tick on the form is a claim of interest; the button in the greeting is the person confirming it's really them, at that address, really asking. Only after it's pressed does the contact move from "said yes on a form" to a real member of your audience. When do I need someone's permission to email them? covers what counts as a yes more generally - this greeting is where the confirm half of that story actually happens for a form submission.
If nobody presses the button, nothing goes wrong and nothing is lost: the person stays in your contacts as a record that they asked, and you can always follow up by hand.
When no greeting is needed at all
Not every form needs one. A waiting list with no separate marketing tickbox - just "tell me when the course opens" - already carries its own permission the moment someone joins, because joining for one specific thing is the yes. The greeting exists for the case where a form also offers a genuine, separate "hear about everything I do" box, and someone ticks it.
Turning it on and changing the wording
In Contacts, open the Automatic emails tab. Each kind of form that can carry a marketing tick has its own row, showing "No welcome is sent at the moment" or "New sign-ups get a welcome asking them to confirm." Press "Edit the greeting" to write or change the subject and the wording, "Save greeting" to keep it, and the toggle to turn the whole thing on or off. Nothing sends before you flip the switch on, and changing the wording afterwards doesn't need a fresh approval each time.
Ask Bernard to write or tighten the greeting in your own voice if you'd rather talk it through than type it yourself.
Questions people ask
- What does this greeting actually do?
- It's the very first email a form sends, the moment someone submits it and ticked the marketing box. It carries your words, plus a 'Yes, keep me posted' button underneath that bernard adds automatically. Nobody joins a campaign audience without pressing that button - the greeting is what asks them to.
- Why one greeting per kind of form, not per form?
- Because bernard only ever asks four questions of a submission: was it a waiting list, a download or lead form, an enquiry, or a registration. If you run three waiting-list forms across your site, they all share one greeting - write it generally enough to suit whichever one someone filled in.
- What happens if I leave it off?
- Nothing sends. No greeting, no confirm button, and nobody from that form joins a campaign audience through this route - however many people submit it. Some forms don't need it at all: a plain waiting list with no separate marketing tick already has its own permission the moment someone joins, and nothing here changes that.
- How do I change the wording?
- Open Contacts, the Automatic emails tab, and find the row for that kind of form. 'Edit the greeting' opens the subject and the body; write it, then 'Save greeting'. The confirm button is added underneath automatically - don't write your own link to it, bernard's is the one that actually counts as a yes.
- Does turning it on need my approval each time?
- Turning the switch on or off is the approval - nothing sends before you flip it, and editing the wording afterwards doesn't need a fresh approval each time either. What always needs a real tick from the visitor is the marketing box on the form itself; the greeting only ever follows one of those.