NONE: Re: ONLINE-ADS>> Newsletter subscription bonanza
Re: ONLINE-ADS>> Newsletter subscription bonanza
Cliff Kurtzman (cliff_at_tenagra.com)
Sat, 15 Mar 1997 00:59:06 -0600
Jim Sterne wrote:
>At 12:14 AM 3/8/97 -0600, Cliff Kurtzman wrote:
>>we were very pleased when a recent design change
>>increased newsletter subscriptions by a factor of 30!
>
>OK Cliff - spit it out. Don't be shy...
>What on _earth_ did you do to your site to
>achieve such results?
Er, gosh. In conjunction with a complete redesign of our site, as an
experiment we put a simple entry field right on our opening home page. It
just says: "Join Our Mailing List", "Enter your E-mail address here", and
"Submit".
Previously, to receive our newsletter, you had to either send us an e-mail
request or submit a form that was on a secondary page rather than on the
main home page. You also had to supply personal information in addition to
your e-mail address if using the subscription form.
We still have a "Contact Us" page which allows people to put in personal
information, ask us questions and subscribe to our newsletter. We receive
the same number of newsletter requests from this page as we did before the
redesign. But we receive as many newletter requests from the simple main
page field in one day as we do from the Contact Us form in one month. We
figured putting a subscription option directly on our home page would
increase the subscription rate, but frankly were surprised by the full
3000% increase.
I usually advise mailing list operators that they should give subscribers a
reasonable expectation of what they should expect to receive in conjunction
with the subscription form. But our new home page does not tell people
what type of content they will be receiving when they subscribe (it is a
newsletter with news about our company, clients, new web site launches,
client news releases, my speaking schedule, and a few Internet marketing
tips) or how frequently we send out a newsletter (every one or two months).
I guess folks just figure if they don't like what starts coming, they will
just ask to leave the list. And of course we include information on how to
unsubscribe in each mailing.
The downside to using a simple single field subscription form is that we no
longer know who our subscribers are and how they heard about our site. The
latter information we find particularly useful in tracking print and tv
references to our company and clients.
--Cliff
Cliff Kurtzman
President
The Tenagra Corporation
http://www.tenagra.com/
281/480-6300
