Daniel Burstein

Email Marketing: 77% of marketers use website registration pages to build email lists

April 5th, 2013

In the MarketingSherpa 2013 Email Marketing Benchmark Report, we asked email marketers which list-building tactics they use …

Q: Which of the following tactics is your organization using to drive email list growth? Please select all that apply. 

 

As always, we asked the MarketingSherpa audience for their actionable advice based on this data …

75% increase in opt-in rate using squeeze page

When the election campaigning was in full swing last summer, I noticed that Obama was using an interesting squeeze page on whitehouse.gov. I swiped the wireframe and built a similar one of my own for my marketing tools website at AffPortal and noticed an immediate difference in my opt-in rate of about 75%. There’s a lot of value in watching what the big budget guys are doing to list build and swiping the concepts.

– Corey Bornmann, AffPortal.com

 

Excellent advice, Corey. For those looking to learn more from the “big budget guys,” Toby Fallsgraff, Email Director, Obama for America, and Amelia Showalter, Director of Digital Analytics, Obama for America, will be presenting a keynote case study – Email Optimization: How A/B testing generated $500 million in donations – at Optimization Summit 2013 in Boston.

 

77% of marketers use website registration pages to drive email list growth

Very good breakdown of marketing options and success rate.

Web page registration is one of the most trusted, hence the high success percentage.

Offline, it’s comparable to responding to a P.O. Box versus an actual address.

– Paul Harding, Jr., Creator/Publisher, iCyberSurfer

 

6% use other tactics to drive email list growth

How about pop-ups and slide-ins? Are these included? I’d be interested in seeing how these work for people in “quality” markets such as B2B.

I’d also like to know about email harvesting as a tactic because I think many people use it but don’t admit it. They are scared of being called spammers but in reality, if they are presenting valuable solutions, they are not [spammers]. So how about a line for email harvesting?

Personally, I think the “share with a friend tactic” is underutilized because it can be encouraged to a level that takes email capture to exponential heights. You can forward to five friends at once!

– Boyd Butler, consultant

 

Thanks for your insights, Boyd. We might include pop-ups and slide-ins in a future benchmark survey based on your advice.

The best I can surmise from our current data is the use of pop-ups and sliders is a fairly little used tactic, since only 6% of marketers chose “other.” If we dive deeper into the data, and pick a typical B2B industry – in this case, Software or Software as a Service – 7% chose “other.”

 

As for email harvesting, be careful. While I’m not a lawyer, I highly suggest any marketer thinking of this tactic seek legal advice. We do not plan to ask about email harvesting in future benchmark surveys.

 

Related Resources:

Marketing Research Chart: Marketers’ list growth tactics

Email Testing: How the Obama campaign generated approximately $500 million in donations from email marketing

Improve Your Email Programs: 5 test ideas

Email Research: Top 3 tactics to grow your list

Daniel Burstein

About Daniel Burstein

Daniel Burstein, Senior Director of Editorial Content, MECLABS. Daniel oversees all content and marketing coming from the MarketingExperiments and MarketingSherpa brands while helping to shape the editorial direction for MECLABS – digging for actionable information while serving as an advocate for the audience. Daniel is also a speaker and moderator at live events and on webinars. Previously, he was the main writer powering MarketingExperiments publishing engine – from Web clinics to Research Journals to the blog. Prior to joining the team, Daniel was Vice President of MindPulse Communications – a boutique communications consultancy specializing in IT clients such as IBM, VMware, and BEA Systems. Daniel has 18 years of experience in copywriting, editing, internal communications, sales enablement and field marketing communications.

Categories: Email Marketing Tags: , , , ,



  1. April 6th, 2013 at 03:25 | #1

    Email has consistently been the most stable traffic source for most big marketers. Which is why I was a little surprised at how low the numbers were in your survey for blog registration.

    Why do you think that Website Registration Pages runs so high in the survey at 77%. While Blog Registration Pages runs relatively low at 28%?

  2. April 8th, 2013 at 11:04 | #2

    The registration method for list building works because it gives a different impression. It is something that is expected rather than an annoying bribe so its deemed more trustworthy. But this also depends on the niche because somber people get annoyed at registration pages as well and club ck away. Only testing wil give you the true answer.

  3. April 22nd, 2013 at 10:36 | #3

    Oh – thank you for this survey. This survey backs up how we use landing page registration forms to build our lead list.

  4. April 30th, 2013 at 10:37 | #4

    I do believe website registration email lists will be quality and we can use this as a targeted email lists. Offline events and registration during purchase is my next choice.

    Thanks for sharing this survey.

  5. October 2nd, 2013 at 16:45 | #5

    This is 100% true and I wanted to send a word of caution along with the warning about email harvesting. Had a friend get in trouble, $10,000 fine.

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