Newsletter Signups & Lead Magnets

Sometimes you don't need a full contact form. You just want to collect email addresses. StoutStack has two purpose-built sections for exactly that: Newsletter and Lead Magnet. They're separate from the full Forms system and are designed to be quick to drop onto any page. This article explains what each one does, where the signups go, and one very important thing to understand before you rely on them.

The Newsletter section is a clean, single email-address box for building your mailing list: "Join our newsletter," "Get updates," and so on. It's deliberately minimal so it doesn't get in the way.

Styles

Choose the look that fits the spot on your page:

Inline Pill: a compact, single-line box and button, great tucked into the middle or end of a page.
Centered Card: a tidy standalone card that draws a bit more attention.
Banner: a full-width strip, good as a page section break or footer call-to-action.

What you can customize

Placeholder: the faint example text in the email box (for example, "you@example.com").
Button text: the wording on the sign-up button ("Subscribe," "Join," "Keep me posted").
Success message: what people see right after they sign up.
Disclaimer: a small reassurance line, like "No spam, unsubscribe any time."
Trust line: a short credibility note, such as "Join 2,000+ subscribers."
List ID: an optional label saved alongside each signup, so that when you look at your Subscribers list you can tell which box on which page somebody came through.

Lead Magnet

A Lead Magnet offers something valuable (a guide, checklist, price list, or similar) in exchange for an email address. It's one of the most effective ways to turn browsers into contacts.

Styles

Split (with a book-cover graphic): the giveaway is shown as a book/cover image beside the sign-up box, which makes the offer feel tangible.
Centered: a focused, middle-of-the-page presentation.
Banner: a wide strip for a bold, hard-to-miss offer.

What you can customize

Benefits: a few bullet points spelling out what the reader gets ("10 questions to ask any agency," "A printable checklist," and so on).
Book-cover badge, title, and author: the details shown on the cover graphic so the giveaway looks polished and real.
Asset Slug: a short internal name for the specific file you're giving away. Visitors never see it; it's there so you can tell your different downloads apart when signups come in (for example, brand-audit-guide versus pricing-benchmark-sheet).
List ID: an optional label saved alongside each signup, the same as on the Newsletter section, so you can group these signups when you review your Subscribers list.

Where the signups go

Signups from both the Newsletter and Lead Magnet sections land in one place: Forms → Subscribers. Each entry notes its source, so you can tell a plain newsletter signup apart from each specific lead magnet. That makes it easy to see, for instance, that "the brand audit guide is pulling in far more signups than the newsletter box in the footer."

A few things are handled for you automatically:

No duplicates: if the same email signs up again, it won't create a second entry.
Reactivation: if someone who previously unsubscribed signs up again, they're simply reactivated rather than duplicated.
Where they came from: each subscriber also records the page they signed up on and any campaign tags on the link that brought them, the same marketing attribution kept for form submissions, so you can see whether the footer newsletter box or the lead magnet on one particular page is doing the work. It covers the visitor's current browsing session rather than their whole history. See Viewing Submissions & Lead Tracking.

If somebody asks to be taken off your list, a Site Admin opens Forms → Subscribers, finds the address, and checks the Unsubscribed box. There's no automatic unsubscribe link on the StoutStack side, because StoutStack isn't what sends your emails. Once you're sending through your own email tool, that tool's unsubscribe link is the one people will click, and it's the one that has to keep working to stay on the right side of anti-spam rules.

Critical: capturing an email is not the same as sending one

This is the most important thing to understand, so please read it carefully. The Newsletter and Lead Magnet sections capture the email address, but they do not, by themselves, send a confirmation email or deliver the file. Signing up adds the person to your Subscribers list, and can pass the signup on to another tool (see below), but StoutStack never emails the person itself.

Anything you want them to receive (a welcome note, a "here's your download" message, or your regular newsletter) comes from your own email tool, working from the signups it receives or from the addresses in your Subscribers list.

What to do about it

Check the success message first. New sections say "Thanks, you're on the list" (Newsletter) or "Thanks, you're signed up" (Lead Magnet), which is true. Sections added earlier said "Check your inbox," which confuses people when no email is on its way, so change any that still say it. Only promise a follow-up, such as "We'll be in touch soon," if someone will actually send one.
For a lead magnet, hand the file over on the spot. The success message is plain text, so it can't hold a clickable link. Instead, put the download button on the page right below the Lead Magnet section, or build the giveaway as a full Form and use its Redirect confirmation to send people to a thank-you page that has the file on it. See After Submit & Placing Your Form on a Page.
To deliver signups into another tool automatically, a Site Admin opens Site Settings → Settings → Send signups to another tool and adds a Webhook address. Each new signup is sent there the moment it arrives, with the address as its own item named email, so Zapier or Make can add it to your mailing list. Add a Slack address too if you'd like each signup posted to a channel. Someone signing up again with an address already on your list isn't sent twice. See Getting Notified: Email, Slack & Webhooks.

Who can manage subscribers

Anyone signed in can view your Subscribers list, but editing or removing subscribers is limited to Site Admins. This keeps your mailing list protected from accidental changes.

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