Congrats to our EIS Awards Finalists Dr. Scholl’s and Sazerac!

A Fresh Look at Winning Trust

Last updated: Oct 18, 2016 admin When new visitors or existing customers come to your website, you have a very limited time to convince them to part with their email address – and to give you permission to email them.To win a potential subscriber’s permission, you need to do 3 things:1) convince them that they’ll benefit from receiving your messages2) prove that they can trust you with their email address3) tell them what to expect, so that you can enjoy a long, mutually beneficial relationshipA “more information” link to a separate registration page can provide space to give the unconvinced more detailed information and an opportunity to personalise their content or its frequency. In this example, Time Out’s subscription box conveys all the necessary information very concisely. Benefits, frequency, a sample newsletter and a single-field subscription process are all included effectively in a small area on the site’s homepage.BenefitsAs email marketers, we’re likely to sign up to more newsletters and communications than most consumers – we know and trust the process, and we’re interested in seeing what other companies are doing. But it is important to remember that consumers are much more picky about what they sign up to.In order to maximise the number of subscribers you need to give people a reason to subscribe, and you need to mention this at the sign-up stage. The best benefit to offer is something unique – something only your email subscribers will receive. This benefit can be exclusive to subscribers, available to them first, or both: member-only discounts, first notification of new releases and free delivery for subscribers are good examples.Expedia’s registration page conveys the benefits of subscribing clearly and well.FrequencyIt’s important to give prospective subscribers information about the frequency of contact they should expect. If you are sending regular communications (which we recommend), you should mention this at the registration stage. This could be as simple as mentioning it in the name of your communication – “Weekly offers” or “Monthly newsletter”.If your messages are more ad hoc, you should tell customers the maximum frequency with which you expect to mail them – eg “no more than once a week”.PreferencesGiving subscribers control over what they receive is a good way of protecting your reputation and ensuring they are happy to keep receiving your communications in the long term. One of the best ways to do this is to let them set their own preferences for frequency and content choice. Whether this is possible for your programme will depend on your resources, the content you have available and the number of subscribers on your list. The BBC offers a range of preferences to its subscribers, allowing them to choose frequency, delivery time and type of content.ExamplesPrevious newsletters are a great way to show potential subscribers the content and format of what they can expect to receive. This visual trigger can also help your newsletter to look familiar when it arrives (which may be up to a month later), reminding the subscriber that they did sign up.Privacy policyA link to your privacy policy – or even better, a plain English summary of it – will reinforce the fact that you are a reputable organisation, making it easier for people to trust you with their email addresses.

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