Many Websites Miss the Mark on E-mail Sign-ups

The e-mail subscription efforts of commercial websites are surprisingly spotty, according to a recent study by digital marketing firm Publicare Marketing Communications. Publicare attempted to subscribe to e-mail lists on 6,757 websites. Shockingly, given the value of e-mail acquisition, 10% of sites did not even offer e-mail subscriptions, and 18% made it hard for visitors to sign up by hiding the subscription form on subpages or requiring a user account prior to sign-up. So congratulations to the 87.3% who put the subscription form on the home page, and the 29.7% of those who then promoted a simple form with a pop-up layer. But shame on the 13.2% who got folks to join their e-mail list and then dropped the ball, failing to deliver even one e-mail within two months of winning a subscriber. And despite the high ROI of e-mail marketing, only 18.8% offered an incentive, such as a coupon, for joining the mailing list. By the way, opt-in strategy ran the gamut from confirmed opt-in (46%) to single opt-in (34.2%) to double opt-in (19.8%). For a useful infographic, see https://hive.publicare.de/en/email-marketing-benchmark-part1/