• Jaina

    Great run down here! As much as I loathe pop-ups, they’re pretty effective, especially when combined with an offer. And you get that offer straight away in your inbox.

    Think my biggest issue with a lot of online retailers and their newsletter sign-ups, is that you’ll have the form on the homepage, footer, wherever it is, but then upon hitting submit, you’ll be forwarded onto a page with a much larger form, requiring all sorts of details from you. JUST for a newsletter sign up. Definitely not the way to go, if all you want to do, as a customer, is receive a newsletter.

    • http://actionrocket.co Millie Bartlett

      Definitely – always tricky when you are trying to get preferences out of a subscriber though. Having the option to update your preferences later on is a good way to get around that issue.

  • http://www.freshaddress.com Austin Bliss

    Great tips!

    I particularly like #4, and am constantly reminding our customers of that exact point… keep the form EASY! Marketers of course want to know everything about their customer (gender, age, etc.), but we need to fight our instincts and ask only for the absolute minimum, as otherwise it slows the signup process and encourages abandonment.

    If you are asking for more info (e.g. birthdate), it is great to have a popup “why” that gives more detail/reassurance, e.g. “So we can send you a surprise on your birthday!”