We are going to continue where we left off just before Christmas discussing Email Marketing List Growth and Management - List Growth.

In this blog we will cover

• Making your sign-up process easy to find in the website
• Incentivising the prospect to sign up

Make it easy to find

Different companies approach the on-boarding process to subscription differently, however if you are serious about growing your list then the entry to this process must be easy for a customer to find. Below is a great example of how to do it by German retailer, Kaufhof. The sign-up process is clearly prominent in the middle of the homepage screen, above the fold, and requires only that the customer enter an email address.

Similarly UK-based travel agent Thomas Cook offers an easy to find sign up in the tab area just under the main banner on the homepage. Again, a simple email address is all that the customer is requested to enter.

Offer a benefit or an incentive

Given the amount of email marketing received by customers today, you may need to consider offering an incentive to get people to sign-up. This can range from content rich materials to discounts on products and services.

For example, UK retailer Argos runs a competition that encourages customers who sign-up for their newsletter to log back in and share more information. The initial promotional newsletter reaches the email inbox (fig. 1). The recipient can then click on the incentive to move to a separate landing page and enter more details (fig. 2).

Using the same incentive-based approach, Swiftpage (provider of Sage E-marketing for Sage CRM) offers access to a monthly thought leadership platform should you subscribe (fig. 3).

In the next post we'll take a look at 2 other useful tips - making the subscription process easier to use, as well as a key point on what not to do: ask for too much information!