Email Sign Up Performance

Iris Mullan · July 2016

Hi,

I'm getting ready to implement our Luminate email sign up on our website and was curious about which form people implement most often. Has anyone found if the single email field performs better than the form asking for First Name, Last Name, and Email? I'm wondering if asking for First Name and Last Name deter people from signing up.

Thanks,

Iris

Caleb Copper · July 2016

Hi Iris!

Believe it or not, we've found that the best performing email sign up forms have 3 fields (typically First Name, Last Name, and Email Address). This is good for your org to get complete data for this first interaction on the website, and it's only a few pieces of personal information, so it rarely deters subscribers.

I'd also suggest looking at this SlideShare (starting on slide 88) and addional article on npEngage which talk about improving your email signup process! Chock full of great suggestions that you can take away something.

SlideShare - http://www.slideshare.net/mikesnusz/20-ways-to-increase-and-engage-web-traffic-bbcon-2013-mike-snusz-sophia-latto

npEngage article - http://npengage.com/nonprofit-marketing/5-important-items-to-include-on-your-email-sign-up-form/

I'd love to hear how other nonprofits are building their email signup forms, especially if there are any measured results of how it's performing

Allison King · July 2016

In addition to Caleb's recommendation (which is a great one!), if you want to gather more information about your consitutents, you can set up the three field form to lead into a form asking for more information, such as address and email interests. This form will be prepoulated with the information from the first form, making it easier for them to fill out.

Iris Mullan · July 2016

Awesome! Thank you so much Caleb!

iris

Caleb Copper:

Hi Iris!

Believe it or not, we've found that the best performing email sign up forms have 3 fields (typically First Name, Last Name, and Email Address). This is good for your org to get complete data for this first interaction on the website, and it's only a few pieces of personal information, so it rarely deters subscribers.

I'd also suggest looking at this SlideShare (starting on slide 88) and addional article on npEngage which talk about improving your email signup process! Chock full of great suggestions that you can take away something.

SlideShare - http://www.slideshare.net/mikesnusz/20-ways-to-increase-and-engage-web-traffic-bbcon-2013-mike-snusz-sophia-latto

npEngage article - http://npengage.com/nonprofit-marketing/5-important-items-to-include-on-your-email-sign-up-form/

I'd love to hear how other nonprofits are building their email signup forms, especially if there are any measured results of how it's performing

Brian Mucha · July 2016

Allison King:

In addition to Caleb's recommendation (which is a great one!), if you want to gather more information about your consitutents, you can set up the three field form to lead into a form asking for more information, such as address and email interests. This form will be prepoulated with the information from the first form, making it easier for them to fill out.

We just direct them to their user profile (in edit mode) as the survey's thank you page. If they walk away we still have a record with Fname, Lname and email address. The user profile also offers access to email interests, which makes sense to show (if you are using them.)

I've been thinking of adding zip code to the sign-up form as well. If you have that, it isn't hard to use the google API to lookup city and state (which could be hidden fields, so the user doesn't even see them.) That's most of an address and really helps with duplicate resolution.

edit: I attached the Jquery plugin I made to handle that zipcode lookup, in case anyone is interested. I built this for a new API donation form I'm in the middle of, so it's still being tested. We found this idea in a Noah Cooper example on this board somewhere, but it was buried in some pretty complex code. I made it into a dedicated plugin.

Here's the (still in progress) form to see it in action: http://foundation.luriechildrens.org/_temp/form.htm

Dale Anania · July 2016

Hi Iris Mullan:

We tested this 5 years ago for the homepage and did find we got more emails when just asking for the email and no other info. However, we eventually decided the constituent would be much better served if we knew their zip code (so we can change their content based on how far they are from our various facilities) so we have added that field without testing. Note: zip code is not a required field, though the donor does not initially know that. You can see our homepage at www.MarineMammalCenter.org

Iris Mullan · July 2016

Dale Anania: Thanks for this information. It's always helpful and nice to know what others have tested and find useful.

Thanks for sharing!

iris

Hi Iris Mullan:

We tested this 5 years ago for the homepage and did find we got more emails when just asking for the email and no other info. However, we eventually decided the constituent would be much better served if we knew their zip code (so we can change their content based on how far they are from our various facilities) so we have added that field without testing. Note: zip code is not a required field, though the donor does not initially know that. You can see our homepage at www.MarineMammalCenter.org

Email Sign Up Performance

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