Subscription practices: good and bad examples

There is growing emphasis in email marketing on relationships. Relationships start and relationships end. How you handle both moments has a big impact on your marketing success.

Let's avoid theory for a change and see what marketers are actually doing in this context...a quick trip into the deep waters of the email world netted a few examples of sign-up and unsubscribe practices for you to mirror (or avoid).

Getting the email address

Calls to action aren't just for your emails. Return Path highlight a good example of a call to action for getting people to part with their precious email address in the first place.

Email Marketing Voodoo pick out all the winning principles applied by Newegg.com in their sign-up process.

DJ Waldow describes one car rental company's successful attempt to acquire an email address offline. But then confusing and delayed messaging undoes some of the goodwill.

Keeping the subscriber happy

Lisa Harmon points to several examples of companies giving subscribers better control over the flow and content of emails they get.

Reagan Taylor alerts us to two examples of companies who send dedicated emails with the sole aim of getting recipients to indicate the kind of communications and content they want.

Saying goodbye gracefully

Some unsubscribe requests are actually people looking to change their email address. They could unsubscribe and then sign-up with the new address. But sometimes they do the first bit and neglect the second bit, becoming an inadvertent unsubscribe.

Alex Williams demonstrates how a subscriber preference center avoids that particular problem.

Joshua Baer shows how one online newspaper puts up too many barriers to unsubscribing, a practice shortly to become illegal in the USA.

And Dennis Dayman has an even better example of what not to do.

More on list building | Tags: email marketing, email list growth, email address acquisition, sign-up forms, subscription forms

Permalink | June 18, 2008 | 0 comment(s)
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