The subscription inbox, what makes it tick?

[Brett_Tabke]

Ever notice the ebb and flow of subscriptions to your newsletters? It bugs me. Anyone ever find a viable way to back track those and figure out just what it was that light up the form signups? I find it very difficult to put a finger on just what it was.

Sure, some of them you can see instantly when you get a good url link somewhere, but other times it is almost mysterious.

Take yesterday for example: completely out of the blue we do more in one day than we normally do in a week. No great increases in traffic, no subscription spammers, no great referrals - just a truck load of subscriptions.

[FreeBee]

We’ve wish we could figure out a similar type of pattern. We’ve seen two types of “rushes” on a relatively broad set of pages over a few years worth of results:
a)A makeover on an old page and out of the blue with no apparent change in SERP’s or increase in traffic and the page is “working”.
b)Specific sets of pages or individual products that get a few days’ worth of conversion to proper enquiries/submissions without any marked change in traffic.

In the case of the makeovers it invariably comes down to a fundamental change in the page “appeal” – the message has come through clearly and the visitor responds appropriately. The problem is that the appeal seems to disappear gradually – can’t always figure out exactly why the change worked in the first place and then why the message seems to lose impact without any other mods to that specific page over time.

In the second case we’ve practically given up. We write it off to some factor totally independent of our web efforts – a change in the weather, some TV programme having incited “buyer interest or mode”, something in the news that sparks an idea in the heads of a few hundred users etc. etc. Basically something over which we have no control.