Nine Tips for Building Your E-mail Housefile

All of my favorite catalogs (both business and consumer) regularly e-mail to me promotions or newsletters. It appears that today’s catalogers are taking e-mail communication seriously and devoting significant marketing efforts to regularly contacting customers and prospects. Indeed, a cataloger’s e-mail file is a valuable asset in building site traffic and sales. Following are nine tips to aggressively grow your e-mail list.

Prominently feature on your Web site’s home page an invitation to sign up for

e-mailed communications. Most catalogs offer a subscription for e-mail specials or newsletters; but they can be amazingly hard to find. Sometimes I have to scroll down below the “page fold” to find it. Sometimes it’s buried in a list box of features. And sometimes it isn’t even on the home page!

Be sure your invitation stands out. The upper-right or upper-left sections of your home page are optimal positions. Web usage studies have shown that those places are where the eye is likely to go.

One company significantly increased its sign-ups by moving the registration area from the bottom-left position to the more visible top-right area of its home page.

Keep sign-up simple. Ask for e-mail addresses first. When site visitors click “submit,” bring up a page that asks for first and last name and permission to communicate with them in the future.

Tip: Test carefully to see how many additional questions you can ask before the abandon rate escalates.

Capture subscriptions on multiple pages of your Web site. First-time visitors may reach your home page but not be ready to provide you with their personal information until they know more about your products and services. As they explore your site, hopefully, they’ll become more engaged.

Tip: Examine your site logs to determine which areas have the highest traffic, and include a sign-up area on those pages.