Best Practice for Email Opt-in?
December 06, 2005
A key aspect of any email marketing campaign is the opt-in (registration) process.
Experts debate what information should be captured during this process and how
it should be used.
The latest trend: Use profile centers to allow customers to opt in
to the content they want to receive. That content is sent. No more,
no less. Great idea? I'm not so sure. Readers don't always know what they're
missing. Relevancy is a moving target that can't be predicted.
What's the answer?
Rely on clients to change their preferences? Send unwanted content mixed with
desired content? Ask poll questions inside the email? Or maybe devise propensity
models to predict reader interests based on profile information?
I solicited some marketers for their advice on how they currently address
this dilemma. Many looked at me as if I had six heads, but a few provided great
insights. Here are some of the results:
- Financial services. "We put three small partner ads
in our emails every month and sell them as benefits of being email recipients.
Every quarter, we track which types of offers do best and retain those while
we test new partner offers. We don't personalise offers by customer, though." - Telecommunications. "We add in a section on one of
our emails that's promoted as 'new offers.' If people click on those, we send
an opt-in email invitation for that group's emails. It works well for us." - B2B high technology. "We change the main theme of
our messages every month and lead with a story that we choose (kind of like
a front-page news ad). This is followed by the customised selections our clients
make." - Automotive. "We only send messages based on selected
preferences, but every quarter we email the preference selections to our clients
to confirm their interests." - Entertainment. "Are you kidding? We don't ask for
content preferences. We send you what we feel is compelling for that time
period." - B2B sales. "We tried asking people to opt in to business
solutions -- and told them how many emails they would get about it -- and
saw tremendous results in conversions. The problem was, once the deal was
closed we didn't have a structure to cross-sell them."
What Should You Do?
There isn't yet enough research to back up any definitive best practice for
the email opt-in experience or preference centre usage. But look at your opt-in
and profiling experience from a different vantage point to ensure it performs
as it should.
Three questions to ask:
- How much and what type of information do you request at opt-in? Is it enough
to begin a dialogue with a client or prospect? - What strategy do you use to learn about other interests? How will you turn
that into increased loyalty or sales? - When you realize your reader has stopped responding, how you do to reengage
them with your brand?
Even if you don't review your opt-in process or preference centre now, keep
an eye on the topic. It's going to get quite a bit of attention.
This article was written by Jeannie
Mullen on 8 August 2005 for Clickz, a great internet marketing resource.