Free Email
Free Newsletter
META Tag Generator

Our Other Sites

GoTraining
Get Training on what you need.

GoExam
Certification practice tests with free demos to download.

GoCertify
Complete computer certification resource center covering virtually every IT certification.

SearchCertify
links, links and more certification links!

Why You Should Offer An Email Newsletter - page 2

Another very important link to have here is to your privacy policy. This could be just your newsletter privacy policy - you don't have to show a full page legal document. Have another popup that says, for example, something simple like "Our Newsletter privacy policy is that we don't share your email address, ever, with anyone outside the company." If the visitor is concerned about leaving an address, you've offered an answer to the question - and my recommendation is that you provide a simple, direct answer.

If you'd like to see an example that comes close to these recommendations, take a look at http://www.queensboro.com. You'll see that the newsletter box offers links for three reasons, as well as a link for the privacy policy. [Editorial Note: The example site has changed since this article was written, so it no longer exactly matches the description below.]

Queensboro does one more really good thing, then IMHO they miss the boat in a couple of other areas. The first reason they given to leave your email address is that you gain a regular chance to get FREE STUFF, a daily drawing for a free shirt! The shirt is related to the business, and that's a good thing, and the single free shirt isn't quite the same as what the company wants to sell shirts in large quantities, so they are not quite giving away the same thing that they sell, and that's good.

I don't believe their second and third reasons for subscribing are as strong. The second reason they give is to keep open the offer that brought you to the site, which may or may not be a good idea, since if the offer doesn't expire then maybe I don't need to order today. And for the third reason they offer the prospect of lower prices, which could be teaching visitors to never buy at full price, wait for the deal. Instead of deals, you could offer inside information about your business that's interesting in some way, advance information about new products that are coming, and so on. Useful information, but not eroding the base of your business.

The way Queensboro offers their privacy policy is terrific - at the point where the visitor might have the objection "If I leave my address will I get a ton of spam?" But then I believe that they hurt this great idea by showing a popup of their whole privacy policy, covering on-line purchases and everything. All the visitor is doing here is leaving an email address, the rest of that stuff is irrelevant and the visitor doesn't want to read it. Just provide a simple assurance that you won't share the email address!

You'll notice that Queensboro collects the first and last name, a good idea because it allows the personalization of the newsletter to include first and family names. Of course, I very much prefer "Dear Dave" to "Dear Subscriber", don't we all? But Queensboro can go beyond that, and can suggest that you order custom shirts "to give the Roberts family as Christmas gifts or at a Roberts family reunion."

Queensboro asks the visitor to enter the email address twice. We all understand why this is done - if the email address is wrong, then we've lost track of the visitor. And we all know that it's easy for our visitor to make a mistake when entering an email address. But wait a minute! Some visitors may leave without subscribing if we ask them to take extra time. And this extra time is for our convenience - so that we have the right data - at their expense - extra time entering the same data twice. And it vaguely insults them by the implicit suggestion that they can't type their own email address! So I'd drop the second entry of the email address at this point.

So there you have it, why you want to have a newsletter and how to handle newsletter signup, offering an incentive to enroll and assurances, all in a rather small box.

###

Dave Roberts provides expert Web marketing services to help you meet your business goals. Visit his Web site at: DaveDoesItAll.com

(c) copyright 2000-2007 Anventure.  All Rights Reserved.
privacy policy