Austin Bliss — April 3, 2018 We all know that email addresses are critical to your company’s success. But, are you doing all you can to capture the highest volume of quality email addresses possible? Here are 8 tips to get you moving in the right direction!
1. Ask for your customer’s email address everywhere!
- On every page of your website
- During every phone call
- On every paper order form
- Don’t forget in-person and point of sale interactions as well!
2. Tell Why
People volunteer their email address in exchange for something. Make sure you clearly explain what value you are offering through email.
3. Reassure
Have an easily accessible and understandable privacy policy. Even a phrase like “[company] respects your privacy and will never disclose your email address” does wonders. Also, be sure to explain the cadence of your mailings.
4. Give An Example
On your website, have a link to a sample email you send so recipients know exactly what to expect.
5. Leave Plenty of Room
Make sure you leave enough space in your input box for long email addresses. Otherwise, you are causing unnecessary typos & frustration. A study by FreshAddress found that:
- The average email address is 21.9 characters long.
- But to accommodate 95% of addresses, you’ll want to design a form field 31 characters long.
6. Have Helpful Error Messages
Think error messages are something for your tech teams to worry about? This is a mistake! Good error messages can increase your accurate email address capture rates and reduce user friction.
7. Catch Typos
On your website, figure out a way to catch the common errors people make when entering email addresses (e.g. “hotmial.com” instead of “hotmail.com”).
- FreshAddress offers an API that can automatically catch and correct typos and other misspellings.
- Even having a second page that displays what the user typed and asks “is everything correct?” helps tremendously.
8. Confirm
Confirm every email address you collect. Ideally, by a promptly deployed email message. Getting an opt-in click on this confirmation email is the holy grail for email marketers.
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