This is just one of the stats I picked up at the Email Newsletter Usability one day event last week in London. It was based on the Nielsen Norman Group’s recently released third edition of their Email Newsletter Usability report. The session was presented by Amy Schade, who co-authored the three studies with Jakob Nielsen. We talked about the usability of email newsletters ALL DAY LONG – a real treat for this email geek

So, back to this: why are 40% of potential subscribers not completing the sign up process?

Here are some of the reasons:

• Form not working – error messages.
• Too many pages to go through during the registration process.
• Double opt-in email (the final click) was not completed by the potential subscriber. (Reasons included: email never arrived or didn’t arrive immediately, was filtered, wasn’t recognised, never got around to clicking it.)
• Too many required fields.
• Too much personal information required in exchange for “just a newsletter”.
• An account (create a password and username, etc.) was mandatory to activate in order to get the newsletter. Too much effort for a ‘free’ newsletter.

Anything here you need to rethink about in your own sign up process? It’s apparent by the reasons given that the key to success is ease and simplicity. Easy to sign up, and fast to complete. No barriers. Don’t start a relationship by pressing for as much information as your marketing department thinks they can get away with – but instead ask for enough to allow you to send timely, targeted and relevant emails right away.

(I’ll be posting more of my insights from this fantastic day long conference.)

Posted on May 29th, 2008 under Email Marketing, HTML email newsletters, ezine strategy .
RSS Feed | Leave a response | Trackback | Add to del.icio.us | Add to Digg