Firestarter

Ways to make your subscribers life easier

 

Getting your message through to your subscriber is one topic. Making the process as easy as possible for your subscriber to engage with your business is an important and often overlooked issue. It’s important to make the process easy and even entertaining if possible!

This article was contributed by Kevan Baker from web2grow. Kevan’s contact details can be found at the end of the article.

People will use services, products and processes that are easy to do. Their are some fine examples out there such as the Google search engine, the search, the whole search and nothing but the search! In other words, no flashing ads, no multitude of links or distracting images – just the search tool. You probably have a certain way of going about things that your regular subscribers are used to but would cause difficulty for new sign ups. It is important to recognise this as it is, of course, central to expanding your database.

Here are 7 quick points that demonstrate an easy process. Are you practising these already?

• 1. Do you have a link to your sign up form on all your daily business emails?
• 2. Does your site provide a cut down sign up form (First Name + Email address) on every page of your web site?
• 3. Decrease the number of mandatory fields, you can get more details by data mining at a later time!
• 4. Can your emails be viewed online, via a text link at the very top?
• 5. Do you include a send to a friend link on every newsletter?
• 6. Do you use hybrid emails; in other words are they half text half images and enable the subscriber to read the text even if the images are blocked?
• 7. Do you use descriptive button labelling instead of the plain old “Submit”, like “Your Free Report Here!”

How many are you practising, if you “scored” less than 4, don’t give yourself a hard time as many businesses are in the same boat.

Please find the following sugestions to get you started.

For the sake of simplicity we have organised these into two main categories for you.

Management

This covers the mechanics of receiving email: how easily your users can sign up, manage their preferences and subscriber data, even when unsubscribing.

Content

This section addresses how easily they can find your emails in the inbox, read your email message content and navigate from your email to your Web site.

Email management

1. Making it easy to subscribe

   Place your newsletter or service sign-up form, or web link to a form, on every page of your site, on every automatically generated email, “About Us” pages, ensuring your “submit” button displays the actual required action, such as “Subscribe Now” or “Sign me up!”

   In your email messages, include a “Subscribe” link to tempt readers who may have gotten the message forwarded from a friend. Also add a subscribe link and copy to all messages, such as news alerts and confirmation emails.

   Always ensure that your subscriber does not have to complete more than two or three clicks to enable their subscription. Our subscription method at mail2grow is just entering the First Name, Email and sending the info with just one click.

   Click 1: moving from a landing/Web page to the subscription page, or submitting an email address.
   Click 2: submitting data on a registration page or clicking an confirmation link.
   Click 3: Confirming the request via a link in a double opt-in email after submitting from a registration page (optional, but is considered best practice)

   MarketingExperiments.com just completed a study that found an eMarketer who cut the number of steps in its subscription process from nine to three saw a 300% increase in conversions.

   Third, you need personal data from your subscribers to properly segment your list effectively, this can be used to send more relevant content and offers. Asking for too much too soon will turn off subscribers from getting involved in the first place.

   If you go with just an email address box you’ll get more people to opt-in, but you won’t have any information or preferences upon which to use for personalization and segmentation – and it will be tough to gather that information later from subscribers. If you use an opt-in form on a separate page, make sure you ask for only the information you actually need and will use for your email program. Leave off extraneous fields and/or clearly mark the critical fields as “required.”

2. Make it easy to set or update preferences

   Collect your information on one page, including personal data, subscriber preferences (format, frequency, etc.) and content preferences (newsletters, promotions and news alerts). You can also allow password setting and changing here but include a retrieval link for people who forget their passwords. Remember to make this link prominent on your site and in your emails.

3. Make it easy to find subscription details

   This includes data such as the email address used to sign up for the mailings, a link to the preference/subscription page on your site, your privacy policy (a one-sentence statement plus link to full version at your site), contact information and your postal address.

4. Make it easy for subscribers to send your email to a friend

   Making it easy for subscribers to use your emails “send to a friend” function rather than having them use the forward function of their email client (Outlook, Mail etc). You can’t track how often or where those emails are going, even more importantly many email clients do not forward emails with links and images intact. Instead, include a link or submit button labeled “send to a friend” in every non-transactional (a message that does not have any of your personal account details contained) message that you send.

5. Make it easy to unsubscribe

   Being transparent in your service is a great motto for most businesses, it also works for your email list. Making it easy to un-subscribe will protect your list’s integrity and value. If you bury the link in alternative pages or build too many steps in the process, your reader will either take a simpler course, such as hitting the “report spam” button thinking it will make you go away, or just ignore you. Multiply that one subscriber by a thousand like-minded subscribers, and you will end up with a big, useless hole in your list.

Unsubscribing should take one click, or two clicks max if the subscriber is moving from your email to a Web preference page.

Content

6. Make it easy to recognize your email in the inbox

   Your “From” line should show your company or newsletters name, combined with a subject line that should list the main story in the newsletter or summarises a special offer. Your subscribers should recognise and differentiate your emails from the spam and competitive emails flooding their inbox. Give readers a really compelling reason to open your email – do away with those bland, nonspecific subject lines, be direct but stay away from hype (i.e.Open now – This newsletter will change your life!) Let be straight, no newsletter is likely to change your life that requests you to make a purchase…

7. Make your email easy to read and the to take action

   Readers who use a preview pane to view email before opening see only a fraction of your message. Combine that with image-blocking, your subscriber will end up with a big blank area or those annoying blank image boxes with the little crosses in the corner. You don’t have to stop using images, but do design the top of your email to be preview-pane and blocked-image friendly. Make sure the all important calls to action, “In This Issue” copy, etc. are text-based (use HTML tags – colors, bold, fonts) and ensure they are not embedded within images.

8. Make it easy to view a Web version of your email

   Provide a link to a Web version of your email. This helps readers when your HTML messages don’t render properly in their email clients. Put the link high in the email, well above the fold, to accommodate preview panes, test it to make sure it points to the right landing page.

9. Make your emails printer-friendly

   Design your email templates so that when printed out there aren’t big areas of blank background colours. Many of your readers like to print out emails to read later or as a reminder, so make sure email designs are easily read and geared to minimal ink consumption. It’s another important reason to make sure key text is not embedded within images, in case images don’t print well. Alternatively, provide a printer-friendly version of your emails on your Web site.

10. Make it easy to find additional information on your Web site

Your email message’s goal should be to draw readers into your Web site one way or another. For a newsletter, include links to past newsletter content, both past issues and previously published content that relates to material in your current issue. For an ecommerce or promotional message, ensure you link to related products or offers in case what you offered isn’t quite what the reader wants – give them options.

Include links to the most common actions or information your subscribers would be interested in (for example – return policies and shipping options for retailers and advertising information for publishers).

Also, include recurring main navigation links in your email that uses the same language as on your Web site. You’ve trained subscribers and customers how to shop or find things on your Web site – don’t introduce a different style in your emails that would confuse them.

If you have search functionality on your Web site, include a search link from the email. Generally search boxes and forms have issues when trying to function within a delivered email, it’s best to just link to your functining search box.

Make sure ALL links work, point to the right pages and images point to the right files so subscribers

No need to explain this one? Always send out several copies to your team and even a trusted person outside your department or company and have them check through the email. If you want to be extra-careful, test links in different browsers and email clients – Firefox in addition to Internet Explorer and Yahoo!, Hotmail, AOL and Gmail in addition to just your office version of Outlook.

Making your email program as easy to navigate and interact with is one of the most customer-friendly things you can do to improve your results. If you’re not ready to overhaul your whole program, try one or two of these tips and measure the before-and-after results. You will be surprised by the positive results.

If you’d like to know more about what you’ve just read, please contact either at kevan@mail2grow.com or visit my website www.web2grow.com