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.

Point: As consumer patience and attention spans decrease, asking for information beyond an email address (up-front) will most likely result in them not completing the sign-up process at all

In my opinion, name and email address — or even just email address — should typically be the only information that marketers ask for in their email sign-up forms. Understandably, if it is completely necessary for your business to ask for more information, such as a zip code, then by all means do so. Otherwise, the usage of these two simple entry fields is my recommended maximum.

Take Casual Male for example — they’re doing it right. They ask subscribers to enter their email address and that’s it! Subscribers have the option of entering more info, such as name and address, but it’s not required that they do so.  They can quickly and easily click directly through to the homepage, or to any product page they desire. Kohl’s is another brand leader that keeps it short and sweet, requiring only an email address (twice, to ensure validity).

Email marketing is all about building meaningful relationships with your subscribers. Think about when you meet someone for the first time – you don’t ask a plethora of personal, detailed questions right off the bat. You get to know them first, and learn more as time goes on. The same social expectations and behavioral norms should be applied between brands and subscribers online. Take every advantage to collect addresses that you can use to follow up with people – build opportunities later. After all, your competitors are only a click away.

Stay tuned for Ben’s rebuttal to Erin’s side of the story in the second installment of Point/Counterpoint.

Counterpoint: Despite the current economic crisis, marketers should not bombard their customers with more “doom-and-gloom” scenarios, especially high-end businesses that risk diluting their brand with lower-end offers.

Ben’s first point is exactly correct – everyone knows the challenges facing their consumers right now, and consumers are well aware of the need to save money, which is why, in my opinion, there is no need to add to the gloom by reminding them of tough times. In fact, relying on bad news to sell a product and identifying with the recession can significantly devalue a brand’s image and long-term revenue. 

Don’t get me wrong – for the retailers who make deep discounting and penny saving a major focus of their typical marketing plan, by all means, carry-on! But for luxury brands, high-end retailers and thousands of other businesses who have based their entire messaging strategy around high standards of excellence and exclusive sales and specials, don’t compromise your entire communication plan for something as unstable as the current state of our economy.

Don’t Mention the R-Word, a great piece written by Tatyana Shumsky of BER Business Times last month, proved this point to a great extent by using one of Allstate’s ad campaigns as an example, concluding that, “Brands like Allstate are built around quality and prestige stand to damage their brand value with advertising that shifts their positioning closer to the discount products in the same category.”

Take De Beers for example. As a high-end retailer with an esteemed reputation to uphold, they’re doing exactly what’s best for their brand. The multi-channel diamond jeweler has more than doubled its U.S. consumer marketing budget for the holiday season in response to the credit crisis, according to Women’s Wear Daily and the National Jeweler Network. 

“There will still be a Christmas,” said Claudia Rose, senior partner at the DPS. “Millions of men will still buy diamond jewelry…This is an unprecedented campaign for unprecedented times.” 

I also commend food marketers such as Kellogg’s for keeping their advertising light and positive, with a clear goal in mind. Lately, Kellogg’s has focused on advertising for staple cereals such as Corn Flakes, while Campbell Soup Co. is launching a campaign for its condensed soups. The ads successfully communicate that the featured products are inexpensive without using negativity, fear, or the words “recession” and “economy.”

Lastly, we can’t forget about the value of escapism in adversiting. For example, look at travel campaigns such as Tourism Australia – which reminds consumers how unimportant the stresses of everyday life can be, and how the Australia experience can provide the “catalyst for rejuvination.” Marketers should follow in suit and shift focus towards what’s important in life – friends, family, and spiritual well-being.

As marketers, it’s our job to make the most of any situation and keep our messaging consistent. Everyone knows about the downturn our economy is experiencing; there is no need to remind them.

Point: As marketers face the current economic crisis, now is the time to start stressing the concepts of value, frugality, and smart purchases in your email campaigns.

Everyone knows the challenges facing their customers right now — shrinking consumer confidence against a backdrop of global economic uncertainty — so why pretend it’s not an issue? Let’s face it: things are really crazy out there in the real world. Record declines in retail sales! Shrinking home values! The end of TRL on MTV! Spam is on the rise! (the edible kind, at least) Dogs and cats, living together…mass hysteria!

Ok, well maybe that last one came from the 1984 movie Ghostbusters, but many of these fears are in fact justified. 

Marketers must now switch gears and address the current market conditions or risk being left frozen just like the current credit markets. Stephanie Clifford and Stuart Elliot’s recent New York Times article, “Goodbye Seduction, Hello Coupons” perfectly sums up the situation: 

As the economy rapidly deteriorates from flourishing to floundering, marketers are scrambling to remake their advertising so products seem affordable and sensible rather than indulgent and fabulous. For many big marketers, including automakers, retailers, consumer product companies and even financial services, a major shift in consumer psychology spells an end to the aspirational advertising that has dominated their campaigns for the last decade.

Many email marketers have already begun incorporating the frugality concept into their campaigns. Recently, The Container Store sent an email giving cool, DIY gift ideas for the Holidays that won’t break the bank. Technology retailer Newegg.com recently advertised “Gift-able, practical, expensive-looking” (but low-priced) gadgets for sale. Steve Madden had an email recently “Calling all ‘recessionistas’” to save with a discount coupon. 

Everyone knows what consumers are facing out there, and it’s the job of marketers to address those fears, respond to common needs, and provide helpful solutions and suggestions in order to better serve the customer.

Addendum: This article in the New York Times makes it even clearer: “On Fifth Avenue, the Discounts Arrive Early”

But retailers and those who watch the industry say it is particularly noteworthy to see so much red along Fifth Avenue, where sales are usually confined to the back of the store, not brazenly broadcast from windows.

Even the more luxurious stops, among them nearby Bloomingdale’s, Bergdorf Goodman and Salvatore Ferragamo, are discreetly cutting prices, or are about to.