Let me ask you a question. Suppose a new restaurant opened in your town, and immediately took out an ad in the local paper with the following offer: “Send us $20 and we’ll send you some food.” Would you take them up on this proposition?
Although my actual on the job restaurant experience is limited to a couple of summers as a night cook, even a food service novice like me knows that this is not an effective way to bring in restaurant customers.
Without knowing more about what kind of food they serve; what other patrons think of the restaurant; or at the very least when the food will be delivered, it’s likely that only an extremely hungry person with no other food options available would jump at this “opportunity.”
And yet, this is exactly the type of offer you are making when you invite visitors on your web site to, “Enter your email address to receive our E-Newsletter.” As a potential subscriber – unless I’m very hungry and without any other options – I’m going to first want more data about what I’m getting into.
Consequently, when it comes to getting potential subscribers to sign up on your web site, the single most effective thing you can do is to create a separate, stand alone, E-Newsletter-specific sign up page.
In other words, rather than asking people to simply enter their email address in a little box on your home page (which requires a big leap of faith on their part), create a link to another page, and fill that with relevant newsletter information (click here to see a sample of how we do it for this newsletter).
What exactly do we mean by, “relevant newsletter information?” I’m so glad you asked. This is what we mean:
Why do they give away so much for free? Is it because management has lost its edge after years of eating nothing but boneless, skinless, low salt, free range chicken nuggets? Of course not! It’s because they know that if they let you taste some of this stuff, your kids will force you to buy 10 times more (and this time with real money).
A newsletter archive accomplishes the same thing. Potential subscribers get a taste for your newsletter before committing, thereby reducing their perceived risk at signing up to hear from you.
Bottom Line: You go to a lot of trouble to produce a great newsletter and drive people to your web site in the hope that they sign up for it. Don’t forget to leave the door wide open when they finally come knocking!
Michael J. Katz is Founder and Chief Penguin of Blue Penguin Development, Inc., (http://www.BluePenguinDevelopment.com) a Boston area consulting firm that helps clients increase sales by showing them how to nurture their existing relationships, and that specializes in the development of electronic newsletters. He is the author of the book, E-Newsletters That Work.