Main sign-in usability errors

It is very important to devote enough attention to email-newsletter opt-ins. Otherwise email marketer may lose a lot of worthy opportunities. Still too often email marketers do not pay sufficient attention to this problem, they do mistakes and in this way drop additional email addresses, which could become a part of their email marketing list. Here are the most wide-spread errors:

• Sometimes the design of opt-in email message is not quite good. It cannot motivate enough the receiver to sign in, because the only box with “sign in here” call-up without any explanations why the receiver should sign in is not enough to make potential subscriber add his or her email to your list. Of course, it is not related to those persons who already are vested in the topic.
• One more mistake is to make too long pause between the sign in confirmation and the next message. It is often happens that the only thing that make subscribers know the process of signing in was successful is the web confirmation, but nothing arrives to their mail-boxes. In this way subscribers will soon forget about their subscription. An immediate message should be sent after subscription. It doesn’t matter the message is two or more weeks old and a new message is almost ready to come out. The subscriber should feel he or she is already a member of certain community and is happy about it, because have received the needed information due to your emailing.
• Another one mistake is to offer too many choices. It may happen that a single subscribe link may lead to a page with a lot of different newsletters and the subscriber remains confused about the abundance of offers. Thus the user becomes overloaded with information. It would be a better idea to narrow down the number of choices. Or if there isn’t another way you should think of grouping them into separate categories. Unorganized information puzzle subscribers and they often cannot find a really needed newsletter to subscribe to.
• Not many email marketers consider a good idea to notify subscribers about what kind of email messages they will get. Of course it is good if the newsletter presupposes to contain not only information and content not related to Web site, but also descriptions of different goods, which will soon be available on the Web site. But still not all of your subscribers are interested in everything, so you don’t have to overweight subscriber with extra information he or she is not actually interested in.
• Too complicated signing in process cannot guarantee the visitor will complete the process till the end. Moreover there are known such cases when to chose a particular newsletter mailing the visitor has first to provide his / her email address. Such opt-in process will definitely only destroy the reputation of business and will make people frightened of your mailing, it will looks like buying something before seeing it.

To sum up, we have to notice that opt-in offer and process are the first two things the visitor gets accustomed to your email marketing campaign and your business as a whole, so it definitely presupposes a very attentive approach towards it to get a positive feedback.

Thursday, November 25th, 2010 : Email Marketing : No Comments