Growing Your List

An easy, straight-forward way to organically grow your email subscriber list is to include a sign up form on your website. It's logical to think that if someone visits your website, they are interested enough in your product or service to receive email communication from you. Keeping that in mind, don’t bury your email sign up form on the "Contact Us" page.

Have a simple sign up, perhaps asking only for an email address on every page of your website. It’s a good idea to maintain the same location for sign up throughout your site. As new visitors come to your site, they may not sign up immediately, but after viewing a few pages, they may be compelled to sign up. By keeping the sign up form in the same place, your subscribers will know right where to find it when they are ready to do so.

Williams-Sonoma has a simple sign up form on the first page. I'm sure they could increase their subscriber list by including their simple sign up in the left sidebar on every page.

Williams-Sonoma used to ask for voluntary personal information including first name and last name by clicking a link on the confirmation page. I am disappointed to see that they have changed this practice, and now offer a link to communication preferences.



It strikes me as strange, because after opting-in, your choice in changing your preference is...


...Opting-out.