A Simple Newsletter Signup Box
Past issues of this newsletter have talked about the importance of your newsletter and provided an example of a good newsletter. As you start your newsletter effort, be sure that it’s easy for visitors to your site for subscribe! This newsletter talks about that all-important element of the newsletter strategy–your newsletter signup box.
We want to make it easy to subscribe to our newsletter. Just a moment, just give us your email address, it’s easy. But we also want to let our visitor know that we won’t be sending a deluge of unwanted email, and we won’t pass on the email address.
Often we see sites that make a big production of it, with elaborate explanations. Don’t do this! Make it quick and simple to sign up by putting a simple signup button on every page of your site.
Bad Newsletter Signup Boxes
Here’s an example of a typical complicated newsletter signup box, reduced in size to fit our length constrants:
This offers an explanation of what the newsletter contains and tells the visitor that the email address won’t be shared. That’s fine, but it’s a significant amount of reading, and at first glance might appear to contain a warning that needs to be read–a turnoff. Out of courtesy I’ll not name the Web site this comes from! Now take a look at another signup box:
This one takes a whole page, and it asks for a lot of information. When I’m signing up it’s not clear that you need my phone number or my “message,” whatever that is! I’m likely to take one look at the amount of work required here, and the nosiness of your newsletter people, and simply pass on this opportunity.
A Newsletter Signup Box Done Right
Here’s an example of a terrific signup box. You might choose less informal language than the creators of wufoo.com, where it comes from. You might want a (slightly) longer description of what you provide in your newsletter, and perhaps a more formal statement that you won’t be abusing the information the visitor gives you. But that’s all you need! This simple box won’t put off anyone, and it can be put onto every page of your site.
The Bottom Line
Make your newsletter signup simple and straightforward for your visitors, to gain the ability to keep in touch with them and remind them that you’re around and ready to meet the need that brought them to your site.
