---
title: Waitlist with confirmation email
description: Track signups as a custom event, store everyone who joins as a contact, and automatically email them
icon: ListOrdered
---

A waitlist is the simplest possible Plunk workflow: one tracked event from your app, one workflow that listens for it, one email.

## Setup

import {Step, Steps} from 'fumadocs-ui/components/steps';

<Steps>

<Step>

### Create the confirmation template

In **Templates → New template**, create a **Marketing** template. Use `{{variable}}` placeholders for anything you want to personalise from contact data:

```text
Subject: You're on the list, {{firstName}}

Hi {{firstName}}, thanks for joining the {{product}} waitlist.
We'll let you know as soon as your spot opens up.
```

</Step>

<Step>

### Track the signup from your backend

Call `POST /v1/track` when a user submits the form. Use a secret key (`sk_*`) — never call this from the browser.

```bash
curl https://next-api.useplunk.com/v1/track \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer sk_your_secret_key" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "event": "waitlist.joined",
    "email": "ada@example.com",
    "data": { "firstName": "Ada", "product": "Beta" }
  }'
```

This call upserts the contact (subscribed by default) and records `waitlist.joined` on them. Anything you put in `data` lands on the contact and is available as `{{firstName}}`, `{{product}}`, etc. in the template.

<Callout title="Pick a stable event name" type="info">
  A workflow's trigger event **cannot be changed after the first execution**. Namespace it (`waitlist.joined`) rather than something generic you might want to reuse.
</Callout>

</Step>

<Step>

### Create the workflow

**Workflows → New workflow**:

- **Trigger**: `EVENT` on `waitlist.joined`
- Add a `SEND_EMAIL` step pointing at the template from step 1

Enable the workflow. Workflows are created disabled — until the toggle is on, nothing fires.

</Step>

</Steps>

## Tagging signups for later

If you want to segment on waitlist signups later, add an `UPDATE_CONTACT` step before the email:

```json
{ "stage": "waitlist", "waitlistSource": "{{event.referrer}}" }
```

You can then build a [segment](/concepts/segments) of contacts where `stage == "waitlist"` to target with follow-up campaigns. This is cleaner than filtering on "ever fired `waitlist.joined`."

## What's next

<Cards>
  <Card title="Workflows" href="/concepts/workflows">
    Step types and trigger semantics.
  </Card>
  <Card title="Track event API" href="/api-reference/public-api/trackEvent">
    Full reference for `POST /v1/track`.
  </Card>
</Cards>