Chatbot Email Capture

When to Ask, What the Builder Actually Validates, and Where Consent Comes From

Quick answer: Ask for the email late, after the bot has done something for the customer; expect the builder to check only that the text looks like an address; treat the consent as a separate switch that the field does not flip; and check whether the list you push the address into will ever send a confirmation email, because for contacts arriving through an API it may not, depending on what the connector sends. Every builder we cover that documents a check at all describes the same one. Landbot's block expects "xx@xx.xx" and re-asks on anything else; Typebot's says outright that it "won't check if the email address is valid"; Manychat "validates the input to ensure it's in the correct email format." Whether the mailbox exists is a third-party API call, and whether you may send marketing to it is a legal question that neither the field nor the API answers.

The reason to get this right is that the address is the one thing the conversation leaves behind. A conversational form that collects a name, a company size and a budget has produced a lead only if the address at the end of it is real, reachable and lawful to write to. This guide covers the four decisions in order: where in the flow to ask, how each channel and builder takes the answer, what the consent has to look like, and where the address goes once you have it, with a five-turn newsletter capture written out and two numbers to watch after it ships.

Where the ask goes

The address is the most expensive question in the flow, and every source that has rebuilt a form says the same thing about where it belongs. Landbot's own walkthrough takes a seven-field contact form and, before doing anything else, decides to "situate the most committing questions (email and phone number) towards the end of the conversation." Typeform's survey guidance gives the reason in numbers from its own data: "forms with six or fewer questions had the highest completion rates," and forms that took under a minute completed "15% higher." The email question spends the most of that minute, because the customer has to decide whether they trust you, and then type accurately on a phone.

There are three positions in an SMB bot where the ask survives, and one where it does not.

After value. The bot has answered the question, quoted the price, checked the stock or shown the calendar, and the address is the way to receive the result: the quote as a PDF, the booking confirmation, the back-in-stock alert. This is the highest-yield position because the customer has a reason of their own to give a working address. It is also where the confirmation message does double duty: the email that carries the result proves the address works.

At the handoff. Landbot's walkthrough describes the "Default assignation" for human takeover as the point where "you can add questions like email (to be able to reach them in the future) or inform the users about your availability in case there are no agents connected." A customer who is about to wait for a person will give a real address so the person can reach them. The handoff design guide covers the rest of that turn.

At the exit. The customer is leaving and the bot offers to send what it could not finish. Lower yield, but it is the position that catches the ones the first two missed.

The position that does not survive is before anything: a mandatory email gate on the first message. Tidio documents this as a product setting, the Pre-Chat Survey, which "is displayed to visitors when they try to send their first chat message, and it's mandatory to complete then." It works for a support widget where the customer has already decided to talk to you and expects to leave contact details; it is the wrong default for a marketing bot, where the first message is the customer testing whether the thing is worth talking to. If you use it, the same Tidio article notes that "The email field also gives you an option to ask for the visitor's subscription consent," which is the separate switch the consent section below is about.

How each channel takes the answer

The mechanics differ by channel more than by builder, and the channel decides whether the customer types the address or taps it.

Two consequences follow. On Messenger, a pre-filled address is the most accurate one you will ever collect, because the customer did not type it; the trade is that Meta's one-time transmission means you must save it on the tap, and if the profile has no address the button is simply absent, so the flow needs a typed path underneath: show the button, leave typing open, and route the typed text somewhere useful, which is the rule the buttons vs free text guide applies to every button question. Everywhere else the address is typed on a phone keyboard, and the validation ladder below is what stands between you and a list full of typos.

The validation ladder: format, existence, consent

"Validation" in a builder's settings means one rung of a three-rung ladder, and it is worth being precise about which.

Rung one: the format. Every builder in the table except Voiceflow, which documents no check at all and is listed to show the absence, does this and none does more. The table is the documentation, not our testing.

Format checking catches "john@gmail" and "john at gmail dot com." It does not catch "jhon@gmail.com," which is the error that costs you the lead. Two builders document the fix, and it is not a validator: it is a read-back. Manychat's custom-fields article shows an example in which "the email provided by the user is repeated, and they are asked to confirm if it's correct," and Landbot's walkthrough has a step titled "Give the User a Chance to Doublecheck the Submitted Info." On a phone, a read-back with a Yes / Fix it pair of buttons costs one turn and catches the transposition a regex never will.

Rung two: existence. Whether the mailbox exists is a network question, answered by a validation service that checks the domain's mail records and, on some services, the mailbox itself. Typebot's docs point at the mechanism ("trigger a HTTP request block and call an email validation service API"); Landbot's 2021 walkthrough builds it with a webhook to a freemium verification service and saves the returned score into a field. Whether it is worth the per-call cost depends on what the address is for: a quote PDF sent to a dead mailbox costs you a lead, a newsletter contact that bounces costs you sender reputation, and a Klaviyo help page names the cheaper alternative for the second case: double opt-in exists partly because "spam-bots could also find your form and flood it with fake email addresses."

Rung three: consent. Neither rung above touches it, and it has its own section.

The field is not the consent

A valid, existing address is not permission to send marketing to it, and the builders that sell an email channel say so in their settings. Manychat's Email reply type has two separate options: "Save email to System Field stores the email address in a predefined system field," and "Email opt-in ensures users explicitly consent to receive marketing emails from you, helping you comply with legal requirements like GDPR." Its email-channel article adds that "As the account owner, you are solely responsible for ensuring that all imported contacts have provided valid consent." Tidio splits the same way: the Ask a Question node collects the address, and a separate "Subscribe for Mailing" action "allows you to sign in the visitor to your mailing list," with the instruction "Please remember to ask the visitor for consent first - for example, by using the ask a question node." Two switches, two questions in the flow.

What the consent has to look like depends on where the customer is, and the two regulators whose guides are written for small businesses disagree on the starting point.

United States, CAN-SPAM. The FTC's compliance guide does not require prior consent for commercial email. Its requirements are about the message: "Tell recipients how to opt out of receiving future marketing email from you," "Honor opt-out requests promptly," within "10 business days," and "Tell recipients where you're located. Your message must include your valid physical postal address." The guide never requires prior consent; its one direct statement on the point, made about subscription and membership programs, is that "you don't need to get members' consent to send them marketing emails" while they keep the right to opt out. It is explicit that "Each separate email in violation of the CAN-SPAM Act is subject to penalties of up to $53,088" (the inflation-adjusted maximum on the page as read; the FTC revises it yearly). For a US-only list, the bot's job is to collect an address you can lawfully use and to make sure the sending platform's unsubscribe and address footers are on. The law is the floor, though, not the practice: every platform quoted on this page makes permission a condition of using its email channel (Manychat holds the account owner "solely responsible" for consent; Tidio says to ask first), so a US bot still records the Yes.

United Kingdom, PECR (the EU rule comes from the same ePrivacy Directive, applied through each country's law). The ICO's guide starts from the opposite rule: "You must not send marketing emails or texts to individuals without specific consent. There is a limited exception for your own previous customers, often called the 'soft opt-in'." Consent means the customer "specifically consented to receiving emails or texts from you – for example, by ticking an opt-in box"; the soft opt-in covers "an existing customer who bought (or negotiated to buy) a similar product or service from you in the past," provided "you gave them a simple way to opt out both when you first collected their details and in every message." Two sentences on the same page matter specifically for chatbots. The rule "applies to emails, texts, picture messages, video messages, voicemails, direct messages via social media or any similar message," so the DM channel the bot runs on is itself covered. And "Sole traders and some partnerships are treated as individuals," so a B2B bot cannot assume the corporate exemption. The ICO page carries a banner that the guidance "is under review" following the Data (Use and Access) Act; read it live before you rely on it.

In flow terms, a lawful capture for a UK or EU customer is a question with a Yes answer that is stored, not a field with an address in it. Manychat stores the answer in an "Opted-in for Email" system field and flags EEA users in an "EEA affected" field; Tidio's leads carry "an email consent status" that moves "from non-subscribed to subscribed"; SendPulse's documentation says an address collected in the bot "is also saved to the mailing list in the Email Service" and does not describe a consent flag on that write, so the consent question and its answer need to travel in a variable of your own. The data privacy guide covers where that answer is kept and for how long.

Double opt-in, and where it silently does not run

Double opt-in is the confirmation email that turns a typed address into a verified subscriber. Klaviyo's definition: "a process through which a new subscriber must confirm their subscription before being subscribed to a given list," so that "Only subscribers who confirm their subscription will be successfully added to the list." It is the cheapest existence check there is and, in some jurisdictions, the customary evidence of consent.

The trap is that a chatbot does not submit the ESP's form. It pushes the address through an API, a native integration or a Zapier-style connector, and whether the confirmation goes out depends on what that connector writes. Mailchimp's help page ties the audience-level toggle to its own forms ("Double opt-in for email contacts can only be enabled for Mailchimp signup forms. If you need help with a form integration or the API, contact your developer"), and its developer documentation spells out what the API has to do instead: "For double opt-in emails to be sent properly, the contact's status must first be set to transactional and then to pending," a two-request sequence that ends with a PATCH carrying "a value of pending for the status field." A connector that writes the contact as subscribed skips the confirmation entirely, and most builders' connectors do not show you which status they send. Klaviyo's rule is documented from the other side: "When subscribing a profile via API with a list, the list's opt-in settings determine the opt-in process used to subscribe the profile," and "if you use a third-party form, or the signup is passed through our API, Klaviyo will not create an empty profile— instead the subscriber will only sync into your account if they've confirmed opt-in." Neither platform is "off" for a bot; both depend on what the connector sends, which is why the only reliable check is to push a test address from the bot and see whether a confirmation arrives.

If it does not, you can build the confirmation in the bot. Landbot's help has an article titled "Two-Step Email Verification" that "creates a random four digit number and saves it in the variable @verification_code," sends it by email through a SendGrid block, and then checks "if @user_input is equal to @verification_code." Manychat's email article does not mention double opt-in; its advice is "Consider sending a confirmation email or message to double-check consent and build trust with your users." Either way, the confirmation email is also the moment the drip campaign starts; the drip campaign guide picks up from there.

Where the address goes

The builder's own storage decides what the address can do next, and the naming is not consistent.

Manychat distinguishes a system field from a custom field, and the distinction has consequences: "If you want to opt users into your SMS or Email channels, their Phone number or Email address should be saved in the respective System Fields." An address saved to a custom field is data; an address saved to the Email system field is a channel. Its Email system field description names the downstream uses, "integrations with email marketing tools, sending notifications, or tracking user activity."

SendPulse writes the address to its own email product without being asked: "When you receive an email address or phone number from a user, a mailing list is automatically created in the Email service with the chatbot's name." Tidio saves to "your contact list" and marks the subscriber with the separate action. Typebot saves to a variable and has no native ESP block: its integrations list on 11 September 2026 covers Google Sheets, HTTP request, Zapier, Make, Pabbly Connect, Segment and a Send email block, among others, so a Mailchimp or Klaviyo sync goes through one of those. Landbot's help index lists HubSpot, ActiveCampaign and SendGrid integration articles; its 2021 walkthrough also mentions sending "directly to your MailChimp mailing list," and the Landbot review is where to check what the current integrations panel shows. Botpress saves to a workflow variable as a string, and what happens next is code.

The rule that survives all six: the address, the consent answer and the date of the consent answer travel together to whichever system will send the email, and the bot's own contact record is not that system. The chatbot integration guide covers the plumbing.

A worked example: a five-turn newsletter capture on a website widget

A specialty coffee retailer's website bot. The customer has just asked whether a roast is back in stock and the bot has answered that it is not. Position: after value, with the exit as the fallback.

Turn 1 (bot, buttons): "It's due back on the 24th. Want an email the morning it lands?" Buttons: Yes, email me / No thanks. A button question, because the answer is enumerable and the Yes is the first half of the consent record.

Turn 2 (bot, open field, Email validation on): "What address should it go to?" Validation set to the builder's Email type. Retry message written by you, not the default: "That doesn't look like an email address yet. Try the form name@example.com." Skip after two failures, to the exit.

Turn 3 (bot, read-back, buttons): "Sending to {email}. Right?" Buttons: That's right / Fix it. Fix it returns to turn 2 with the field cleared.

Turn 4 (bot, consent, buttons, only if you also want marketing): "While I've got you: we send a short roast note twice a month. Want that too?" Buttons: Yes, add me / Just the alert. This is the second consent record and it is separate from the first; the alert is a transactional message about a request the customer made, the roast note is marketing. Store the answer and the timestamp in their own fields. For a UK or EU customer, do not pre-select, and do not bundle the two questions into one Yes.

Turn 5 (bot): "Done. You'll hear from us on the 24th." Then the write: address to the Email system field or its equivalent, the alert flag and the marketing flag to their fields, the whole record to the ESP list whose double-opt-in setting you have tested. If the ESP will not send the confirmation for an API contact, the alert email itself is your confirmation: a dead address bounces, and the bounce is the existence check. That means holding the marketing flag until the alert on the 24th has delivered, or accepting that the first roast note goes to a few addresses the bounce will then clean up.

Five turns, two consents, one read-back, no gate. The tone rules for the retry line are in the fallback copywriting guide, and the chatbot scripts library has the field caps for the same flow on WhatsApp, where turn 1 becomes a three-button reply message and turn 3 must fit its text in the caps.

Measure it after it ships

Two numbers a week later, and both need a denominator the builder does not give you by default.

The capture rate is addresses saved divided by conversations that reached the ask, not divided by all conversations. A bot that asks at the exit will show a low rate against total conversations and a fine one against the customers it actually asked; the conversion rate entry has the denominators. The invalid-attempt rate is retries divided by asks; above one in five, your retry copy is unclear or your customers are on a keyboard that hides the @ sign, and a read-back turn is cheaper than better regex. If you run double opt-in, add the confirm rate (confirmed divided by pushed), which is the only number that tells you the addresses are real; if you do not, the ESP's first-send bounce rate on bot-sourced contacts is the same measurement a week late.

What our fifteen reviews record

Searched 11 September 2026, case-insensitively, across the fifteen files matched by sample-reviews/*-review.md: email capture, collect email (and its inflections) or capture email appears in 1 (Manychat, whose template gallery has a "Collect Emails" filter); double opt-in in 0; email validation in 0; pre-chat survey in 1 (Tidio); mailchimp in 8 and klaviyo in 5, both as integration names. The captures that bear on this page: the Manychat review records a "Collect Emails" use-case filter in its template library (the adjacent gallery screenshot is dated 25 May 2026); the Tidio review records the pre-chat survey as part of the live-chat surface; the Tars review and Typebot review describe conversational-form lead capture as each platform's anchor use case. None of the fifteen protocols typed a malformed address into a live bot, tested a Messenger user_email pre-fill, or pushed a bot-sourced contact into an ESP to see whether the confirmation email fired. That is a protocol gap, recorded here; the ladder above is what a future round should walk. Corrections to editorial@chatbotscape.com.

Where it breaks

Three failure modes we would look for first. The Messenger pre-fill without a typed path: the profile has no address, the quick reply is not shown, and the flow waits forever on a button that does not exist; every Messenger email ask needs the typed field open beside it. The consent field that was never written: the ESP receives an address, the marketing send goes out, and there is no record of the Yes; the fix is to make the consent answer a stored variable with a timestamp, and to put it in the same payload as the address. And the double opt-in you assumed: the list is set to double opt-in, the bot pushes through the API, no confirmation goes out, and the list fills with unconfirmed addresses that bounce on the first campaign; the test is a single push from the bot to your own address before launch.

FAQ

How does a chatbot collect email addresses?

With a question whose answer type is set to Email, so the builder checks the format before saving the reply to a field: Landbot's Ask for an Email block, Typebot's Email input, Manychat's Data Collection block with the Email reply type, Tidio's Ask a Question with Validation set to Email, SendPulse's Email validation type, Botpress's EmailAddress capture. On Facebook Messenger the ask can be a quick reply that Meta pre-fills from the customer's profile, which they tap instead of typing.

Does a chatbot verify that an email address is real?

Not by default. The builders check the format only; Typebot's documentation says its block "won't check if the email address is valid" and points to an HTTP request to a validation service. Existence is checked either by such a service, by a read-back turn that catches typos, or by a confirmation email (double opt-in) that a dead address cannot answer.

Is an email address collected by a chatbot consent to send marketing?

No. Manychat's own block has separate "Save email to System Field" and "Email opt-in" options, and Tidio's help says to "ask the visitor for consent first" before its Subscribe for Mailing action. In the UK and EU, the ICO's rule is that you "must not send marketing emails or texts to individuals without specific consent" apart from the soft opt-in for existing customers; in the US, CAN-SPAM does not require prior consent but requires an opt-out mechanism and your postal address in every message. Store the consent answer as its own field with a timestamp.

Does double opt-in work for contacts a chatbot adds?

It depends on the email platform and on what the connector writes. Mailchimp's help ties the toggle to "Mailchimp signup forms," and its developer docs say an API-added contact gets the confirmation only if the contact's status is set "first to transactional and then to pending"; a connector that writes subscribed skips it. Klaviyo's help says a profile subscribed through its API follows "the list's opt-in settings" and syncs "only if they've confirmed opt-in." Push a test address from the bot before launch and see whether a confirmation email arrives; if not, build the confirmation in the bot or let the first transactional email serve as the check.

Where in the conversation should a chatbot ask for the email?

After it has done something for the customer, at the handoff to a person, or at the exit, and not as a gate on the first message unless the bot is a support widget. Landbot's walkthrough moves email and phone "towards the end of the conversation"; Typeform's data favors forms of six or fewer questions. A mandatory pre-chat email field is a documented Tidio setting for support widgets and the wrong default for a marketing bot.

What is the best chatbot for email capture?

The one already attached to the system that will send the email. SendPulse writes the address into its own email service automatically; Manychat has a paid email channel and needs the address in its Email system field; Tidio has a subscriber flag and its own campaigns on the Plus plan; Landbot, Typebot and Botpress hand the address to an ESP through integrations or HTTP. Our lead-generation shortlist ranks the platforms; this guide's point is that the ranking matters less than whether your consent field and your confirmation email actually fire.

Related guides

• Conversational form (glossary) — the object this guide's flow is built out of, and the two senses of the word.
• Lead-generation chatbot (glossary) — the wider use case, and the form-replacement pattern.
• Lead qualification playbook — which questions to ask before the email, and the five-question ceiling.
• Multi-turn form design — keeping the form's state when the customer answers out of order or corrects a field.
• Slot filling (glossary) — the mechanism that holds the email question open until it is answered.
• Buttons vs free text — why the consent question is a button and the address is a typed field.
• Chatbot fallback copywriting — the words for the retry line when the address does not parse.
• GDPR chatbot compliance — lawful basis and retention for everything else the flow collects.
• Drip campaign guide — what to send once the address is confirmed.
• WhatsApp Flows (glossary) — the native form object when the capture runs on WhatsApp.

Sources

• Landbot, How to Create Conversational Forms without Coding: Complete Guide (landbot.io/blog/create-interactive-conversational-form, by Barbora Jassova, dated 11 May 2021), read 11 September 2026: "situate the most committing questions (email and phone number) towards the end of the conversation"; the "Default assignation" handoff description ("you can add questions like email (to be able to reach them in the future) or inform the users about your availability in case there are no agents connected"); "Set up a Webhook to Verify Email Address" with a freemium verification service; the step "Give the User a Chance to Doublecheck the Submitted Info"; "send emails directly to your MailChimp mailing list."
• Landbot Help, Ask for an Email block (help.landbot.io/article/qlqxy3ve7j-email, published 15 October 2019, modified 3 June 2026), read 11 September 2026: "Landbot automatically validates that the email provided by the users has a valid email format"; "The users must make sure to input an answer in the format "xx@xx.xx"!"; "If they enter anything else, Landbot will launch an error message and will ask to enter it again"; the Custom System Messages path; on WhatsApp, "This block behaves exactly the same way as in the Landbot (web) version" and "At the moment, it's not possible to change this message in WhatsApp!" Landbot Help, Custom System Messages (help.landbot.io/article/9t0u9jouqj-custom-responses, published 21 February 2019, modified 17 February 2026), read 11 September 2026: "It is only possible to customize the error messages in WhatsApp bots, making each question validation error customizable," which contradicts the Email block article above. Landbot Help, Forms block (help.landbot.io/article/2te9vgumxw-multi-question-block-new, modified 16 January 2026), read 11 September 2026: "The form automatically validates that users enter a properly formatted email address"; "Required field? – Makes the email mandatory." Landbot Help, Two-Step Email Verification (help.landbot.io/article/85htb3duda-two-step-email-verification, published 27 October 2021, modified 15 April 2025), read 11 September 2026: "This block creates a random four digit number and saves it in the variable @verification_code"; "we'll use a condition to see if @user_input is equal to @verification_code."
• Typebot Docs, Email (docs.typebot.io/editor/blocks/inputs/email, redirecting to docs.typebot.com; no date on the page), read 11 September 2026: "It will check if it is properly formatted"; "The retry message will be displayed whenever Typebot detected that the email is not properly formatted"; "It won't check if the email address is valid. To do that, you will have to trigger a HTTP request block and call an email validation service API." Typebot Docs, Invalid Reply Event (docs.typebot.io/editor/events/invalid-reply), read 11 September 2026: replaces "the default "Invalid message. Please, try again." behavior"; "Track how many invalid attempts a user makes with a variable and show a warning after 3 tries." The integrations sidebar read the same day lists Google Sheets, HTTP request, Zapier, Make, Pabbly Connect, Segment and Send email among others, and no Mailchimp, Klaviyo, Brevo or SendPulse block.
• Manychat Help, Data Collection Block (help.manychat.com, article 18362925739932, updated 27 August 2026), read 11 September 2026: "available on paid Manychat plans"; "Manychat automatically validates the input to ensure it's in the correct email format"; "Save email to System Field stores the email address in a predefined system field"; "Email opt-in ensures users explicitly consent to receive marketing emails from you, helping you comply with legal requirements like GDPR"; "If a user provides an invalid response, you can repeat the question"; "after three invalid attempts, the data collection option will expire"; "This button counts as a quick reply"; "some may not be supported on other channels due to API restrictions and other limitations"; "their Phone number or Email address should be saved in the respective System Fields"; "For the SMS channel, please note that each retry message incurs a cost." Manychat Help, Custom User Fields and Bot Fields (article 14281167138588, updated 3 December 2025), read 11 September 2026: "the email provided by the user is repeated, and they are asked to confirm if it's correct." Manychat Help, How to send emails with Manychat (article 14281215436188, updated 17 February 2026), read 11 September 2026: "As the account owner, you are solely responsible for ensuring that all imported contacts have provided valid consent"; "Consider sending a confirmation email or message to double-check consent and build trust with your users"; "Email functionality is available only on paid plans." Manychat Help, System Fields (article 14281292522652, updated 3 December 2025), read 11 September 2026: the Email field's uses ("integrations with email marketing tools, sending notifications, or tracking user activity"); "Opted-in for Email"; "EEA affected."
• Tidio Help, Start collecting leads (help.tidio.com, article 5399003714204, updated 3 July 2025), read 11 September 2026: "the Pre-Chat Survey is displayed to visitors when they try to send their first chat message, and it's mandatory to complete then"; "The email field also gives you an option to ask for the visitor's subscription consent"; "Remember to select Validation to Email so that the email address can be saved into your contact list. The next important node to add would be Subscribe for Mailing." Tidio Help, Flow editor: Actions (article 5453966368412, updated 24 March 2026), read 11 September 2026: "You can create individual flows' paths to each successful or failed answer"; "The Subscribe for Mailing action allows you to sign in the visitor to your mailing list"; "Please remember to ask the visitor for consent first - for example, by using the ask a question node"; Campaigns "available exclusively to Plus subscribers." Tidio Help, Email Marketing consent (article 10975935523484, updated 30 April 2024), read 11 September 2026: "Any leads you gather in Tidio have an email consent status, and that status can be changed (manually or automatically) from non-subscribed to subscribed."
• SendPulse Help, The Waiting for subscriber's response element in chatbots (sendpulse.com/knowledge-base/chatbot/user-input, last updated 21 June 2024), read 11 September 2026: the Email validation type ("The user's email address is also saved to the mailing list in the Email Service for creating campaigns"); "If the subscriber enters an invalid value ... they will receive a warning message. By default, there is a text for each type that you can edit"; the Skip button "after the first incorrect user input, after the second one, or never"; "the chatbot will no longer check the entered data for validity"; "When you receive an email address or phone number from a user, a mailing list is automatically created in the Email service with the chatbot's name"; "For data with the Phone and Email validation types, the messenger prompts the users to use the contact details of their account."
• Botpress Documentation, Capture Information (botpress.com/docs/studio/concepts/cards/capture-information, no date on the page), read 11 September 2026: "The Prompt Field also includes validation messages and code validation"; "if the user inputs an invalid value, they will be notified with an error message and prompted to re-enter the correct information"; the EmailAddress type, "in any valid email address format, including with special characters such as dots, hyphens, and underscores," saved "in the Workflow variable you specified as a string value."
• Voiceflow Documentation, Listen (voiceflow.com/docs/documentation/build/steps/listen, no date on the page) and Playbooks (voiceflow.com/docs/documentation/build/playbooks), read 11 September 2026: "their entire message is saved to a variable"; the Lead Capture playbook example requiring {company_size}, {use_case} and {email}. The former Capture step URLs now redirect to the Listen page; no email validation is documented on either page.
• Chatfuel Help, Glossary of Terms (docs.chatfuel.com/en/articles/4364177-chatfuel-glossary-of-terms-plugins, no date on the page), read 11 September 2026: "If the user's email address is publicly visible on their Facebook profile, they'll see it auto-populate as a suggestion when the bot asks for it." A legacy Messenger-era page; the current Flow Builder documentation could not be fetched.
• Meta, Messenger Platform, Quick replies (developers.facebook.com/documentation/business-messaging/messenger-platform/send-messages/quick-replies, updated 17 June 2026), read 11 September 2026: "user_email (sends a button allowing recipient to send the email associated with their account)"; "the Messenger Platform automatically pre-fills the displayed quick reply with the email from the user's profile information"; "If the user's profile does not have an email address, the quick reply is not shown. The bot does not receive the email until the user taps the quick reply"; "Choosing the quick reply transmits the information once and does not constitute permission to access the information in the future"; "the email address is passed in the payload attribute of the messages webhook event." Meta, WhatsApp Flows, Components (developers.facebook.com/documentation/business-messaging/whatsapp/flows/guides/components, updated 28 June 2026), read 11 September 2026: TextInput input-type enum including email; pattern "Supported with input-type=" followed by the list {'text', 'number', 'password', 'passcode'}; max-chars "Default value is 80 characters."
• Federal Trade Commission, CAN-SPAM Act: A Compliance Guide for Business (ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/can-spam-act-compliance-guide-business, published 9 August 2023, modified 22 July 2025), read 11 September 2026: "Each separate email in violation of the CAN-SPAM Act is subject to penalties of up to $53,088"; "Tell recipients where you're located. Your message must include your valid physical postal address"; "Tell recipients how to opt out of receiving future marketing email from you"; "While you don't need to get members' consent to send them marketing emails, subscribers and members don't lose their ability to opt out"; "Honor opt-out requests promptly ... You must honor a recipient's opt-out request within 10 business days."
• Information Commissioner's Office, Electronic mail marketing, Guide to PECR (ico.org.uk, guide-to-pecr/electronic-and-telephone-marketing/electronic-mail-marketing, page dated 19 November 2024, with a banner that the guidance "is under review and may be subject to change" following the Data (Use and Access) Act), read 11 September 2026: "You must not send marketing emails or texts to individuals without specific consent. There is a limited exception for your own previous customers, often called the 'soft opt-in'"; "an existing customer who bought (or negotiated to buy) a similar product or service from you in the past, and you gave them a simple way to opt out both when you first collected their details and in every message you have sent"; "This same rule applies to emails, texts, picture messages, video messages, voicemails, direct messages via social media or any similar message"; "for example, by ticking an opt-in box"; "Sole traders and some partnerships are treated as individuals."
• Mailchimp, About Double Opt-in (mailchimp.com/help/about-double-opt-in, no date on the page), read 11 September 2026: "Double opt-in for email contacts can only be enabled for Mailchimp signup forms. If you need help with a form integration or the API, contact your developer." Mailchimp Developer, E-Commerce, Marketing API documentation (mailchimp.com/developer/marketing/docs/e-commerce, no date on the page), read 11 September 2026: "Mailchimp also offers double opt-in, which includes an extra confirmation step to verify the customer's email address. For double opt-in emails to be sent properly, the contact's status must first be set to transactional and then to pending"; step 2, "Edit the contact by making a PATCH request to lists/{list_id}/members/{subscriber_hash} with a value of pending for the status field." Klaviyo Help, Understanding the double opt-in process (help.klaviyo.com/hc/en-us/articles/115005251108, updated 30 March 2026), read 11 September 2026: "Double opt-in is a process through which a new subscriber must confirm their subscription before being subscribed to a given list"; "Only subscribers who confirm their subscription will be successfully added to the list"; "spam-bots could also find your form and flood it with fake email addresses or phone numbers"; "When subscribing a profile via API with a list, the list's opt-in settings determine the opt-in process used to subscribe the profile for that API call"; "if you use a third-party form, or the signup is passed through our API, Klaviyo will not create an empty profile— instead the subscriber will only sync into your account if they've confirmed opt-in."
• Typeform, How to write survey questions people actually answer (typeform.com/blog/survey-school-1-forms-and-questions, "Last published 9.3.2026"), read 11 September 2026: "forms with six or fewer questions had the highest completion rates"; under a minute, "The completion rate was 15% higher than forms that took longer to complete." Vendor-internal data; no sample size on the page.
• Chatbotscape review corpus (the fifteen platform reviews listed at /reviews), searched 11 September 2026 from the repository root. Denominator: ls sample-reviews/*-review.md | wc -l returns 15. grep -liE 'email capture|collect(s|ing)? (an |the |their |user |visitor )?email|capture(s|d)? (an |the |their |user |visitor )?email|email collection' sample-reviews/*-review.md returns 1 (manychat); grep -liE 'double opt-?in' sample-reviews/*-review.md returns 0; grep -liE 'email validation|validat(e|es|ing) (the )?email' sample-reviews/*-review.md returns 0; grep -liE 'pre-?chat survey' sample-reviews/*-review.md returns 1 (tidio); grep -liE 'mailchimp' sample-reviews/*-review.md | wc -l returns 8; grep -liE 'klaviyo' sample-reviews/*-review.md | wc -l returns 5; grep -liE 'conversational form' sample-reviews/*-review.md returns 2 (tars, typebot). Passages cited: manychat-review.md line 235 (the "Collect Emails" template filter); tidio-review.md line 192 (the pre-chat survey); tars-review.md line 105 and typebot-review.md line 201.
• Ahrefs Keywords Explorer, US overview, queried 11 September 2026 — the demand figures in this guide's keyword note.
• Chatbotscape evaluation methodology. /methodology (continuously updated).

About this guide

Chatbotscape launched in 2026 as an independent review site for chatbot platforms. This guide is part of our SMB chatbot Academy and is written for the owner or marketing lead of a small business whose bot ends in an email field and who wants the addresses in it to be real, reachable and lawful to write to. It reads the documented behavior of six builders (Landbot, Typebot, Manychat, Tidio, SendPulse and Botpress), two channels (Meta's Messenger and WhatsApp Flows) and two email platforms (Mailchimp and Klaviyo) as worked examples, and quotes two regulators' plain-language guides; it does not rank the builders, and it is not legal advice. Reviews of the SMB platforms are at /reviews, and each carries its own evidence level. Feedback and corrections to editorial@chatbotscape.com.

Methodology

The vendor, channel, email-platform and regulator pages named in Sources were read in full on 11 September 2026, and every setting name, behavior and quotation carries its source and, where the page shows one, its date. The corpus counts are ours and the commands are printed. The editorial judgments on this page: the three positions for the ask and the one to avoid, the three-rung validation ladder, the read-back turn, the five-turn worked example and the two metrics. They are reasoning from the documentation quoted and from the failure modes in our reviews, not a measured result; where a vendor's own page supports a rule (Landbot on question order and the read-back, Manychat on the two email switches, Tidio on asking consent first), it is quoted beside the rule. Nothing on this page was tested against a live bot in this round, and the corpus section says so.

Last updated

12 September 2026.