Delay webform submission until email confirmation link clicked

Question

We've just started using Drupal webform to offer a front-end to our email subscribers sign up form. Because we offer a number of different newsletters in different languages, we have a number of checkboxes to opt into these. In CiviCRM we run smart groups to gather up who receives which newsletter. Users are also added to a generic "subscribers" group when they click the confirmation link they receive in their email.

I just realised that this means that we're effectively bypassing the confirmation email phase. We could feasibly end up sending newsletters to people who haven't opted into them. Is there a way to configure this so that either a) no data is added to CiviCRM until the user clicks the confirmation link or b) users are set to "on hold" until they click the confirmation link?

Thank you!

Answer 1

Could you just make a smart group that is contacts with group status pending for the subscribers group and then exclude that smart group from your mailings? Alternatively, you could add this criteria to your newsletter groups (this can be achieved with SearchKit).

Answer 2

On the webform you can add them to e.g. Subscribers Group (a regular Group) and set Webform (Additional Settings) -> Confirm Subscriptions.

Then Newsletter A Smart Group can be: All Contacts in Subscribers + who have indicated 'yes' (or checked box for) Newsletter A.

If they remain Pending in Subscribers group (i.e. if they don't confirm their email address) they will never be Added - they are never added to any Newsletter A, B, or C Smart Group.