MindComet

Is AskMen.com Coming On Too Strong?

As an email marketer, I am all about getting as much subscriber information as possible. Knowing who they are and knowing what is relevant to them is invaluable. Having this information makes for an ideal relationship for both the marketer and the subscriber.

But how exactly are you supposed to go about getting this information? Do you ask for as much personal and lifestyle information as possible up front? Or do you take a more lengthy approach, collecting data through responses and activity over time?

AskMen.com believes in the former.

When signing up for their newsletter, you’re given a series of options that are presented in a 4-step process.

The first step being the “List City Guides” step. Mainly, there is a pre-selected opt-in to their newsletter , the “A. List”, which covers everything “guys need to know” about. They also set expectations informing users that it arrives every Wednesday. Nicely done.

In addition to opting in to receive their general newsletter, it provides the opportunity to sign up for newsletters based on a major US, Canadian, UK or Australian city. I’m assuming this comes in handy whenever AskMen is sponsoring an event in that particular city or when a they have a lot of editorial or user-submitted content for a specific area.

The second page consists of more general demographic info—name, sex, zip, etc. The usual suspects. It also provides an option to receive BlackBerry text versions of the newsletter. Smart move, as I’d imagine a large portion of AskMen.com’s potential subscribers probably use BlackBerrys.

The third page consists of an arbitrary refer-a-friend step, which is where AskMen.com loses focus. There is no incentive for the new subscriber to invite their friends to a newsletter that they have not yet received. It comes off as being a little greedy, but I give them an A for effort.

Finally is a sports-centric page with the opportunity to sign up for newsletters on all of the major american sports.

Once this process is complete, they know what city you live in (or near), general demographic info, if you’re using a BlackBerry, who your 5 closest friends are and what your favorite sports are… and they know all of this off the bat.

So is this method of data collection overkill? Does it turn potential subscribers off from signing up? Or is it best to collect this information upon sign up and get it out of the way?

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Posted by Bryan Quilty on Jul. 14, 2010

Before You Go…

I was *this close* from unsubscribing from Shopittome.com‘s newsletter this morning, but once I clicked on the unsubscribe link from my daily sales alert, I was taken to the page below:

I immediately reconsidered my decision of opting out… all because of their variety of appealing preferences. The three preference options broke down as follows: “Take a Temporary Break”, “Make Salemail More Affordable” and “Receive Emails Less Often”. Perfect. Instead of opting out, I set a maximum price of $80 and chose to receive only one email a week. Rather than completely removing myself from their list (in turn remaining a potential revenue source), I stayed on board while receiving emails less frequently featuring less expensive items. This is a surefire way—and a great example of how—to retain your contacts and lower your opt out rates.

What other examples of creative and efficient unsubscribe / preference pages has anyone else seen recently? Comment below!

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Posted by Bryan Quilty on Nov. 18, 2009

Reebok’s Preference Center

No one enjoys filling out forms… at all.  I don’t care what it’s for; it’s always a tedious and mind-numbing experience.  Just about every website that requires a login has the same boring form waiting to be filled out: name, email, password, address, birthday, gender… you know the type.

Reebok‘s site, however, is not “run-of-the-mill” or typical in any way… especially their sign up process. Since they make sporting equipment for a variety of athletic endeavors, they give users the option to scale up or down their interest in a specific sport.  If you are an avid basketball player you can slide your level up to 10. If you train in the off-season, you can slide fitness & training to 6.  You get the idea. There’s also a color preference and an “on the field / off the field” setting. This determines where you’re most likely to wear their products: off the field or on the field. Clever stuff.  I signed up last week and I’ve yet to receive anything from Reebok other than the confirmation email.  I’m hoping the messages I receive reflect my interest settings.

What Reebok is doing is very smart. They’re surveying their users for future product development as well as potentially messaging their users on a very specific and personal level.  It’s a win-win.  And to get back to my original point: I wasn’t bored stiff by filling this form out. It was an interesting user experience which kept me engaged and on their site for a good fifteen minutes longer than I normally would be.

Has anyone else seen any unique email sign up forms?

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Posted by Bryan Quilty on Aug. 04, 2009

Triple Opt In?

I signed up for a slew of gaming emails last year. We were working for a few video game production houses & developers and I was researching their competitors. I was trying to gain insight into what worked for their competitors and where they fell on their faces.  I took notes vigorously of how email for video games worked.

The majority of the competitors had decent email programs. Most had a painless sign up process, engaging emails and all were CAN-SPAM compliant. I also found that they—collectively—know when to scale back their sends when a subscriber isn’t responding or when they’re inactive.

This morning, I was checking my “B2C Emails” folder and I noticed that for some reason or another my SEGA emails were going to my personal account. For the sake of consistency (and unhealthy OCD patterns), I needed to change this to my work email address.  Upon logging back in, I did so… and it was rather painless.

Shortly thereafter, I received another email from SEGA… this time asking me to re-opt-in.

The copy reads:

“To activate your account and join the SEGA PASS community
click the confirmation link below:“

What? Why? My account is already active! To SEGA this means that since I updated my address, I need to re-double-opt-in… or triple-opt-in, as it were. It seems like this is either a matter of list integrity or a redundancy issue they didn’t test for. I think a quick and easy fix to this confusion would be a change in copy… Maybe something along the lines of:

“Thanks for updating your profile. Confirm your change below:“

What do you think? Am I wrong to be annoyed by this? Or am I just being overly critical?

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Posted by Bryan Quilty on Jun. 09, 2009