Sign up boxes just aren't enough

On many sites, you'll see a sign up box for the email list. Something like this



This is very problematic.

• How often is GAP going to email me?
• What is the "special welcome offer?"
• What is the value I will receive?
• Why, exactly, should I give them my email address???
  

This can be improved dramatically

For the GAP, and many others, you should link to a page with the details about the email newsletter program. Give the person an option where they can find out more, without giving you their email address.

Because most email marketers over send, people are growing more reluctant to sign up on email lists.

This email newsletter page should list out the following.

What the benefit IS

You need to sell. What is the benefit to the person for joining yet another email list? This is getting to be a tougher sell each day due to the over-sending nature of many businesses.

Tell them why signing up for your newsletter will make their life better. Focus on benefits, not features.

Frequency newsletters are sent

A best practice is to let your subscribers choose how often they want to receive emails.
Most importantly, tell them the maximum frequency they will receive emails from you.
(It is OK to send less frequent.)

State your privacy policy

If you have a privacy policy page, then link to it. Otherwise, have some text near the sign
up form that describes the privacy of the subscriber's email address. (You won’t sell it or
rent it or do anything evil.)

Don't require too much information (at the start)

You can always ask for more information after you have established a relationship.
Remember, it's a value proposition. You show that you can provide value, your
subscribers will offer up more of their information (about who they are and what they
want). Then you can use those details to send them more targeted messages in the future.
At sign up, ask for email address, first name, and last name. Only ask for more if you
absolutely, positively can use it to their benefit – like a restaurant asking for the birthday.

Don't offer a sign up gift

Many organizations offer a sign up promotion. These can be abused and all too often they
attract people not interested in receiving your newsletter, just in receiving the free sign up
gift. The value from the email should be what convinces someone to subscribe, not the
free gift upon sign up.

Sign Up Cards

Sign up cards are very useful for many retail businesses. Like the online sign up page,
the sign up card should not ask for too much information.

Sign up cards, more than online forms, have a bit higher error rate due to problems
reading what the person has written. If practical, it is best to have the person who
receives the card do a quick “spot check” to make sure the writing is legible. Otherwise
you could end up sending to the wrong email address and be seen as a spammer.

Content Writing Tip - Article Titles

People scan email newsletters. They don't read them.

You can help with scanning through:

• Use of a Table of Contents
• Lists
• Bold
  
• Font size
• Links
• Use of white space

Article Titles are a Key for Scanning
For two reasons. Titles are typically:

• in the Table of Contents
• the largest font in the newsletter

So, article titles have a prominent role in helping your subscribers scan through and then eventually read your newsletter.

If you don't help your subscribers SCAN, they won't read ANYTHING.

You can't force your readers to read the whole newsletter by making it less scannable. That isn't an option. They will either scan it, or skip it. So you don't really have a choice.

Here's the Tip

Think of your article titles the way a newspaper editor thinks of the titles on a newspaper front page.

Minimal words for maximum effect. Words that grab attention. You're not looking for a complete sentence and not even a complete thought.

You simply want to get the scanner's (subscriber) attention. They're moving at Mach 3 through your email, so catch them with a word or phrase that will pique their interest.

If you can slow them down with a title, they might actually read some of the bolded words or the links and some lists. Eventually, heck, they might even read the article and click on a link to your site! w00t, the holy grail of email marketing!

The Online Generation Gap Narrows

According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project as reported on eMarketer.

...more than one-half of those ages 65 to 69 are online as well, and Internet-using 70-to-74-year-olds make up 45% of people that age

Hey, that's good news. Almost half of the people 70-74 use the internet! And, the two most used items are web browsing and email.

For those of you with customers in the older categories, this is important and increases the value of your email marketing programs. Unlike the younger generations who have partially moved away from email as a primary communications tool toward RSS feeds, twitter, and other social media information mechanisms, older people generally use just a web browser and the email program.

This trend will only continue as the population ages, and this bodes well for email marketers and the utility of email marketing.