Collating email database for Newsletter

Which form fields? Just email or name as well?

[The Cricketer]

I am starting to collate a database from my website, so that I can email newsletters to those who fill in the form.

I will probably put a form on every page of the website. I am thinking that the most likely way that I will get a user to input their details is to keep it simple.

With just the one box for their email address I have an avenue to send the newsletters through and then hopefully somewhere down the road I will recieve more contact details from them.

The other option is to add first name and last name fields. This will allow me to give the email newsletters a bit of personalisation. It could also create enough hassle for them to ignore the form.

But which do you think is better? Do I really need more personal details or shall I just stick with the one input field?

[Easy_Coder]

You'll probably get a greater response from the 'email only' flavor of the form. You could however offer up the complete flavor 'fname + lname + email' making only the email mandatory, leaving you the ability to personalize where 'fname + lname' is not null or empty string.

[bakedjake]

I've found that we get very good response by personalizing the letters. Dear firstname, signed (with a graphic signature and a personal name) appearing to come for a personal email address, with the newsletter written in the first person - i.e. "I wanted to show you some new things about the site that I thought you would like."

[The Cricketer]

ok thanks for that. Along a similar line of thought...would you put the actual form (max 3 fields) on every page of your website or just a link to another page where a form could collect much more information?

It seems that they both have pros and cons, but what would you do?

[The Cricketer]

Quite a relevent time to add to this post. Looks like Brett has just put a form to subscribe to 'WebmasterWorld Weekly' on the homepage of this forum.

And he went with just the email input option. This has probably now made my mind up - so I will just include an email address box.

However I think I'll use a double opt-in for the subscriber to click a link via an email which is automatically sent to him and puts confirms their double opt in the mysql database. Rather than Brett's way of doing it as his requires a very small amount of further thinking/action

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[Voltec]

I think that if you just asked for their first name, that would keep from scaring many away that are highly concerned about privacy/security issues. I noticed that many don't like to give out their last names (based on the 50,000 that I had on my previous websites membership/mailing list base) and by just asking for their first name and email address works best.

Matt