May 14 2009
Point/Counterpoint: To Capture or Not to Capture?
The following entry is a response to Erin Geoghegan’s piece arguing in favor of shorter email registration pages. Enjoy!
Counterpoint: It’s important to capture as much data as possible during the email sign-up process. The data you capture enables you to deliver the most relevant emails right away, know more about your audience, and build the foundation for successful, long-term customer relationships.
The sign-up page is a great place to capture customer data, especially for non-retailers. If you’re offering a highly personalized email marketing experience, why not give your subscribers the ability to receive the most targeted campaigns right away?
Plenty of companies feature email registration pages that go beyond name and email address entry. Media companies like BET have a plethora of useful information fields on their sign-up page, including gender, birthday, ZIP code, and newsletter & alert preferences. And why shouldn’t they? BET users can help specify the types of messages they would like to receive, which could reduce abuse complaints and opt-outs. Ad Age is another great example of why media companies benefit from detailed email registration pages. By asking the user for information on their business, job function, industry, location, and interests, Ad Age can tailor their content to those audiences. Perhaps more importantly, Ad Age can use that subscriber information to help sell ad space in their email newsletters to potential advertisers.
One final example I’d point to is Emirates, who go beyond name and email address to help deliver relevant emails right away. While keeping the registration process relatively brief, Emirates asks for the user’s country and top five preferred departure cities so that their offers can be tailored to each subscriber.
While longer sign-up forms are not employed by everyone, there are certainly plenty of instances where they make the most sense.
