Newsletter popularity

It doesn't seem to be what it once was.

[WallaceCleaver]

Do you find that people don't seem as willing to sign-up for a newsletter as they used to be a few years back? I remember I had a couple sites back around 1997 and people would sign-up for their newsletters like crazy. In recent years I have found that I am lucky to get a handful of subscribers at any of the web sites that I have owned. Is it just me or has everyone noticed the shift?

[Chris_R]

I know I am less likely to sign up - as most of the newsletters that I signed up with before haven't survived in the previous format.

[pleeker]

I'd agree with that. Spam has made email more of a chore than it's ever been. And so I think people tend to not want still more email coming in than they've already got.

We run a weekly newsletter and we also post the entire thing on our web site each week, and the online version typically gets 2x - 3x more views than we have subscribers to the email version.

[Dreamquick]

A lot of it will depend on the first impression you make - most of the time the thing that puts me off the newsletter isn't the spam aspect (generally I'm buying your product / using your service at the time so I don't expect you to spam me or resell my email) ... it's more the relevance of your newsletter to myself.

In very niche areas I know what to expect, but for less niche services I won't sign up because I normally get a newsletter that's too generic and so not of much interest to me - for instance;

I currently seem to have myself signed up to a newletter from a store that sells electrical hardware & components (because I bought some computer cables from them last year) but a large percentage of their newsletter isn't of interest to me because it's too generic.

- Tony

[Rosalind]

Once people find a handful of websites they like they tend to stick with those rather than making the effort to look for new ones. It could be the same with newsletters. You risk spam as well as ones filled with irrelevance and excessive advertising when you sign up for each different newsletter. Establishing a new one will likely get harder as more people get wise to the drawbacks and find that small number of quality newsletters that are really relevant to them.

[chrisnrae]

Thats true for me as a subscriber. All the extra effort to put them on my spam filters is a pain, so they actually get caught in there a lot and I never get the ones I do sign up for. Also, after hitting the delete button 600 times to clear what *does* get through, I am not in the mood for a newsletter ;).

The only things I unblock are those with monetary value - for example, one of my fave online stores sends me special "Internet discounts" so, for the money I save, it was worth going through the motions to add them to the filters.

[Longhaired Genius]

chrisnrae

You are in the dark ages of spam filtering. Try Mozilla Thunderbird or some other Bayesian based filtering application and step into the light of an (almost) spam-free world.

[Lord Majestic]

I would not say that people were that willing to subscribe unless they seen clear benefits. Say on our B2C site we found that people are okay to give their email address to be notified when product they want is in stock (for this single specific purpose), but less likely to give their email to join the mailing list.

IMHO specificity of the purpose for which emails are being collected and its relevance to the user is the key. Personally now I am inclined to suggest strategy which would softly-softly ask customer for email for small specific purpose and then try to convert that customer into subscribing to the main mailing list.

Most marketing people (at least in my experience) prefer to go for quantity of emails, and they don't like "complicated" strategies, however most people who subscribe are non-converts anyway and given that a lot of people still paying on per email basis it is a good idea to ensure you get quality people in the list.

[RenFromPenn]

Here is another thing that ticks me off. People complained about being signed-up for newsletter they didn't want, so we webmasters made our mailing double opt-in right? Well, in my experience people rarely reply to the message tellling them to verify their email address.

What is the point of wasting their time and my time by submitting their request in the first place if they aren't going to verify the address. If they don't verify they don't get the newsletter.

[SEOMike]

Seems to me that whenever I sign up for a newsletter I get spam almost instantly. I don't know if spammers are spying on the newsletter signup forms somehow or what. That's what deters me, sign up for one thing and get 7 or 8 because of it. I've used brand new accounts to test this and sure enough, by the time the legit newsletter hit my box I had 5 spam emails. I hate spam, it's a polution, a waste of computer / network resources, and a complete frustration because you can't get rid of it!

That's why I use a strict rules based email filter. Nobody but approved people get in.

[chrisnrae]

Thanks for the suggestion - off to check it out. ;)

[Rosalind]

Here is another thing that ticks me off. People complained about being signed-up for newsletter they didn't want, so we webmasters made our mailing double opt-in right? Well, in my experience people rarely reply to the message tellling them to verify their email address.

It may be that quite a lot of these signups are mischief, and some could be typos. You might get more mischief ones if you have some kind of controversial newsletter or one for an embarrassing condition, and people will sign others up to annoy them. In a crude attempt at mailbombing someone signed me up for about 40 once. Perhaps that kind of childishness is not so uncommon?

[RenFromPenn]

My newsletter isn't anything about an embarrassing condition or of an adult nature. It is all perfectly innocent. I just don't see what the point is of signing up for it if they don't want it.

[Rosalind]

RenfromPenn, could it be that you are being blocked by spam filters, so your email isn't getting through? For example, AOL members can hit "report spam" and many will do this rather than cancel a newsletter, so some legit newsletters get blocked by accident. Find someone using AOL to see if that is the case, and you might also check common spam filters to make sure your email is getting through. If your mailing list address is not the same as your domain then this could cause confusion and people will tend to ignore it as spam.

Also ensure that your confirmation email is so simple a baby could use it, very short and carries no adverts. Don't underestimate how much people will skim through and ignore text, even if you think it's crystal clear.

[RenFromPenn]

My email address is the same as my domain and the only thing that they have to do when they receive the message is hit reply.

[rogerd]

Ren, you might run a few tests using big e-mail domains like aol, hotmail, and yahoo - make sure your confirmation e-mails are arriving properly. Even if your e-mail is perfectly fine, it's possible that your domain has been flagged, or even your web host's IP.

I would expect some loss in the double opt-in, but getting very few confirmations back seems suspicious.

[RenFromPenn]

Will do. Thanks for the tip.