Return On Subscriber – Email Marketing Blog

I’m Aaron, the new guy here at eROI and presently the invited interloper at the helm of Return on Subscriber. Recently I’ve noticed a number of brands using the radio to express their current crush on email.  For those of you born post-1985, a radio (pronounced rey-dee-oh) is the boxy thing in most cars between the dashboard and the climate controls.  There are also other versions of these devices that reside inside homes and offices; can you imagine?  None of these devices allow you to shuffle, share, download, tweet or even choose which song you’re going to listen to.  You simply tune in and hope it works out.

Ostensibly it makes sense for brands to use a media like radio or television to drive email subscriptions.  Promoting channels with other channels isn’t new, innovative or even creative, but it is a good idea.  It shows a brand’s interest in getting to know their customers better, intent to engage with customers in a more meaningful way, and a departure from the brand’s traditional way of thinking.  Excellent!  This is what we all want right?  However, some brands don’t seem to be thinking through the experience their shiny new subscribers will have before they drive people to their sign up forms.  There is a lot that goes into a well-constructed email program, from capturing the email address through the first message.  Creating an experience that teaches new subscribers how to interact with you is the best way to start your new relationship and maximize the lifetime value of your list.

Three things to consider before driving the masses to your subscription form:

1. Don’t Ask For Too Much Information
   The goal here is to get an email address, not a dossier, so keep it short.  Only ask for a piece of information if you intend to use it.  This is only the beginning of your brand’s relationship with this subscriber; there will be other opportunities to learn more about them as time goes on.
2. Set Expectations
   Help your new subscribers understand what they can expect from you. News, offers, event invitations, new stuff… let them know what they’ll be getting, how often they’ll get it, and how they can interact with it.
3. Respect Preferences
   If you ask for them, stick to them.  An email address is valuable so treat new subscribers with the respect they deserve.  If they indicate they would like to receive emails weekly, send weekly.  If they specify men’s clothing and fishing supplies, do not send special offers for children’s clothes and cosmetics.  Respecting preferences will get your emails read and clicked on, and drive conversions.

We all know subscribers are valuable– especially new ones– so care for them.  Nurture them so they’ll become great customers and advocates for your brand.

Professional email marketers know the ugly truth: 9.5 out of 10 website visitors aren’t actively looking to opt-in to your email list. We need to sell it. A simple “Email Newsletter Sign-Up” call out isn’t enough any more.  We have to put on our ‘Billy Mays’ hats and sell it to users.  We can give them discounts to sign up, or promise them the world with a opt-in.  Or, we can just be more aggressive in getting the option in front of them.

When laying out website strategy, we preach that you need to have the opt-in box in the UI of a website – on every page. That might not be enough anymore.  A lot of sites are being more aggressive and pushing a modal window with an opt-in – on entry, mid-visit, or exit – to get you to sign up for those great emails you’re missing out on. In this post I want to highlight this modal window opt-in technique so you can test this out and see if it increases new email sign-ups and/or engagement.

What is a Modal Window?

“In user interface design, a modal window is a child window that requires the user to interact with it before they can return to operating the parent application, thus preventing the workflow on the application main window. Modal windows are often called heavy windows or modal dialogs because the window is often used to display a dialog box.

Modal windows are commonly used in GUI systems to command user awareness and to display emergency states. In the web, they are often used to show images in detail”
(Wikipedia)

Facebook has been a huge driver of the modal window on the web, forcing you to make a decision – yes or no – before moving forward. Developers may refer to the modal window as a LightBox, ColorBox, FaceBox, etc… commonly implemented with jQuery.

Will Users Revolt?

The honest answer is no, as long as you give a clear “No Thanks” or “Close” dialog.  They will choose yes or no to signing up and continue on their way.

A website that I feel does a great job of Forcing the Issue is Bleacher Report. They are serious about getting you to sign up for each team’s personalized email list. Take these examples below, if you don’t sign up for their email list, it wasn’t because you couldn’t find it:

Bleacher Report UI Header

Bleacher Report UI Sidebar

Modal Window Opt-In

Signing up for an email list on a website can be very disruptive to their original purpose of visiting your site. If they are taken to a thank you page and then asked to check their inbox for confirmation, you may traded one goal with another. The modal window opt-in can make things very quick and easy for them, allowing your user to quickly get back to the business of browsing, and hopefully converting.

Also adding pervasive call outs on every page of your website as Bleacher Report has done in their UI will only increase opportunities for new subscribers

Test it out and see if you can grow your email list!

Follow @AlexCWilliams on Twitter

Howdy folks, and welcome back.  Today we are going to attempt to increase the amount of people signing up for your email list through a little bit of testing using Google’s amazingly intuitive (and free) Website Optimizer. To execute this, you need a Google account, and you must be able to both make visual changes to your site and add code to your HTML. If you have an internal web team, work with an interactive agency (like us), or a freelancer, the changes shouldn’t be too difficult to for them to execute.

A/B Experiment Checklist

There are many elements of an opt-in form that can dramatically affect the conversion rate. For sake of this post, we will choose placement on the home page of the opt-in box. The theory is that if you give more promance to your email opt-in, you will get more sign ups. Following thse steps will allow you to find out if this is true for your audience.

• Choose the page you would like to test
• Create alternate versions of your test page
• Identify your conversion page

To test our thoery, create an alternate version of your exisiting home page, with the opt-in box in a different location. For the page variation, use a name like site.com/index2.html. The page will not be accessible to users unless it is served up by the page loader script.

The conversion page is very important in the process, as this is the validation of a successful visitor. You want to make sure that your thank you page is strictly for your email marketing and not also used by other forms.  Also, if you have a double opt-in process, make sure that you idenitfy the first confirmation page as your conversion page, not the page a vistitor goes to from the confirmation link in an email.  Getting them to opt-in is the point, not email confirmation.

Installing and validating JavaScript tags

This is where things stop getting polite and start getting real technical.  If you are unsure about adding code to your website, forward this link to your web team and they should be able to do it in minutes.

There are 2 scripts, - a control script and a tracking script. The control script should appear immediately after the opening <head> tag of the original page.This is the script that communicates with Google’s servers to retrieve alternative page information, and ensures that individual users are tracked properly, by showing them the same variation each time, and by not double-counting their visits should they come back to the page at a later time.

The tracking script is pasted on all 3 pages directly before each page’s closing </body> tag.  This script sends pageview information to Google, so that visits will be recorded in your reports.  The nice thing about this tool is that it validate the scripts before activating the test and also gives you links to send instructions directly to your web team.

May the Most Conversions Win

One thing I love about testing is that no one is right or wrong until the results are in.  You can best practice and benchmark your site to death. But you will never innovate until you test your theories. If you have an idea and a web designer tells you it’s no good – Test it! If you think a different color button will get clicked on more – Test it!  It’s really fun to watch the results come rolling in. The Google Website Optimizer will declare a winner, but it needs at least 100 conversions, so if you don’t get a ton of traffic, you may need to leave it up for a few weeks.

Testing placement is just one area to test.  The goal here is for conversions.  Anything that relates to getting information or purchases from users is on the table.  Do you have any elements you have tested that provided big results?  Let’s hear about them in a comment below!

Follow @AlexCWilliams on Twitter

Nothing frustrates me more than getting sent irrelevant emails from clothing websites. For a store that sells to both men and women, you need gender to provide relevancy. Some stores have the data and don’t use it out of laziness, others don’t ask for the information or don’t have it.

I clicked on a link in a tweet recently that said “my favorite website of the moment” which led me to a clothing site called ASOS. They sell to both men and women and used a great segmentation technique I had never seen before. Instead of having a traditional submit/subscribe button, they had 2 buttons – women & men:

The best user experiences on the web are simple. This doesn’t take much thought and is perfectly intuitive.  If you rely on gender to provide relevancy to increase conversions, this is a great first step. I would give it a try – there is no wrong answer.

My only let down was that I didn’t receive a welcome email after opt-in.  This email could have really focused in on the male content and would most likely drive a lot of page views and conversions for ASOS. Maybe it is in the works…

Have you seen other uses of this opt-in technique on the web?  Let us know in a comment below.

I am surprised every email marketing program doesn’t allow subscribers the ability to change the  email address they receive campaigns at. According to Pew,  ”More than half of working adults (53%) have both personal and work accounts.” (You don’t want to know how many I have). You can’t expect that the email address someone used to subscribe to your email program will never change. If you are only giving them the choice to unsubscribe, that is the choice they will make.

Here is an Example: The Email

Here Were the Choices: Preference Center

What do you think I did? If your ESP doesn’t give you the option to allow subscribers the ability to change their email address, you might want to investigate one that does.

In this post I will show you how to add a custom tab to your Facebook Fan Page using the Facebook Static FBML application. The process isn’t terribly complex, so buckle down for a few minutes and we’ll bust this out. A few things you’re going to need to get started – a Facebook Fan Page and HTML opt-in form code from your ESP. (more…)

If someone wants to unsubscribe, just let them unsubscribe.

Making the unsubscribe process difficult or confusing will just aggravate your (former) subscribers and cause real damage to their perception of your business or brand. Don’t make them log-in or make the text confusing. Your not only delaying the inevitable,  your making it worse. And why? If they can’t figure out how to unsubscribe, they might stay and turn into a more engaged subscriber?  Doubtful. The next time your name comes up, that bad experience will be their first memory. Just let them go, it will actually improve your program. (more…)