I think the behavior you’re trying to create is this pattern…
- Bob visits your site
- Bob is presented with “Sign up for our newsletter and get a free X!”
- Bob gives his email
- Bob is sent to a page where he can read / watch / download X
- Bob is happy
In this flow, passwords and logins and account registrations and email verifications are too interruptive to make the UX flow work. They also don’t add value, because once Bob’s gotten X, what does he now need a login for?
You have several options for how to navigate your user through this. I’ll explain the differences and list the most popular first;
EMAIL AUTOMATION
Email automation is a feature of all major newsletter services including Mailchimp, AWeber, and Mailer Lite. When you sign someone up for a mailing list, an automation can kick off that sends them a “thank you here’s your X” email.
Here’s the flow;
- Bob visits your site
- Bob is presented with “Sign up for our newsletter and get a free X!”
- Bob gives his email
- Bob is told “Thank you, now check your inbox for X”
- Bob checks his email inbox, and gets X
- Bob is happy
To build this, all you need is your email signup form on your site, and a bit of setup in your newsletter provider’s app to create the automation, and the new subscriber campaign.
VARIATION
Rather than giving them X in the email, you can link them to X back on your website.
The advantage here is, you can create a nicer, brandier experience, styled to your site. It’s easier to update X, and you can do nice tracking and conversion analytics in your main site analytics.
This is the same flow as above, except…
- … Bob is told “Thank you, now check your inbox for X”
- Bob checks his email inbox, and reads the email
- Email contains a link to his free X, which goes back to your site, to a hidden Gift Page
- Bob clicks the link, and gets X
- Bob is happy
You can password-protect that page if you really want to as well, but that’s rarely useful or user-friendly.