The newsletter is a useful tool for communicating with your target audience in a simple and direct way.
Like any communication tool, it cannot work on its own: there must be a valid reason for the user to interact and subscribe. Often a discount coupon is used as the main pretext; the problem is that many people, after subscribing and using the discount code, proceed to unsubscribe or create fake emails to get more.
To avoid this, a newsletter must provide value to the user!
With this article, therefore, we want to provide you with guidelines for creating newsletters that are appreciated by users over the medium-to-long term.
Some errors to avoid for newsletter registration
You can have the best reason in the world for users to sign up for your newsletter, but if you communicate it poorly, you’ve wasted a great opportunity.
Remember:
- Avoid using cliché and common phrases such as: Subscribe to the newsletter or Subscribe to the BRAND NAME newsletter.
These are cold expressions used on many sites. Always try to stand out, even in your communication. - Don’t bet everything on “stay updated.” Don’t resort to text like Subscribe to the newsletter now to not miss any discounts or Don’t miss our articles, subscribe to the newsletter now to stay updated.
This is not a valid reason why a user should listen to you. As we will see later, you need to focus on the benefits. - Don’t force people to subscribe at all costs. For example, don’t make the newsletter invitation pop-up appear as soon as the user visits the site, especially if it’s their first time.
Put yourself in their shoes: they don’t know the brand, they still have little information, maybe they want to see all the products for sale; showing this message right away isn’t the best. Instead, you could show it after a few minutes on the site or after a certain number of pages viewed.
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3 steps to truly add value to newsletter subscription
The first element to consider is the title.
A phrase like “subscribe to the newsletter” is not good because it emphasizes an effort—that is, it focuses on what the user has to do rather than what they might get.
For example, if your brand sells yoga courses, you could write: Did you know that thanks to Yoga you can improve your body’s vitality?
After you’ve grabbed their attention, you can invite them to subscribe, but by expanding on what was previously mentioned.
We recommend doing this through a short bulleted list, such as:
Subscribe now and every week you will receive for free:
- Video tutorials of exercises to practice daily;
- Advice on movements from our masters;
- Background music to listen to when you practice yoga.
The third step consists of removing any obstacles, such as spam and privacy concerns.
Reassure your audience by saying they won’t receive more than X emails per week and that their data will not be shared anywhere.
Now let’s try to put all three of these considerations together:
There we go, we have boosted our newsletter subscription form!
Before concluding, we want to show you a couple of real examples to further reinforce the importance of this topic.
In this case, Zara allows you to select your favorite topics to have a strictly personalized, ad-hoc newsletter.
In this second example, Oceansapart focuses first of all on the idea of joining a community and then, to pique curiosity (and obtain more data), asks to also enter the month and day of the birthday to receive a surprise.
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Don’t fall for common mistakes; provide a valid reason to follow you in every section of your site and make your newsletter memorable.
If you are passionate about the topic, we recommend also reading our article on how to create effective registration, login, and password recovery forms!
Would you like to improve your newsletter?
We can help you design it or transform it into an event to look forward to!
