Question

Topic: E-Marketing

Number Of Fields To Have In Email Signup Form?

Posted by Mario R on 9/17/2009 at 4:48 PM ET 125 Points
Hi, we have an email updates/newsletter signup link on our site which requires about 10 different fields of data. I fear we are scaring away new subscribers by asking for way too much info. Unfortunately most of the data fields are used by our team in some way or another.

2 part question:

-What is an optimal number of fields for email newsletter signup links to have?

-If we reduce the number of fields required to sign up to 3 or 4, how else can we gather the data from the eliminated fields?

Thanks in advance for your help.
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RESPONSES

  • Posted on 9/17/2009 at 4:59 PM Member
    You're right, the more fields, the fewer the signups. About 20% of visitors will abandon your page for every additional field they have to fill in. So, the fewer the better. Keep it to name and email if you can.

    If not, here are two other options:

    1) make the additional fields optional (and clearly mark them as such)

    2) survey people after they sign up; offer some sort of additional bonus or incentive to fill out the survey


    Jodi

  • Posted by Marco on 9/17/2009 at 5:26 PM Member
    Having 10 fields is definitely discouraging and will affect your conversion. I would keep it to 3 - 4 fields and ask more information in subsequent communications as you develop a relationship with your audience. Also, I would make sure you have a button with a clear call to action like "sign me up now" rather than "submit".
  • Posted on 9/17/2009 at 5:35 PM Member
    Mario,

    It is a problem that many website business owners have to face. In the early days of the internet people would sign up to everything and databases grew very quickly. Then came spam and the internet user learned to be more discerning on what they would fill in and what they would not.

    Today with so much spam and junk emails arriving at your in box it is not surprising why people do not sign up.

    Before we discus the fields that you should include I suggest that you consider your customers. Who are they and what do they come to your website for. What are they looking for and how much of an investment in time and energy do you think they are prepared to make for your products or services.

    If you can understand your customers you will start to get a feel for the types of people they are and what they would be willing to complete.

    Jodi suggested above that you should put the full table of questions in your form and only make the email and name mandatory. A good call but if you have observed as many people using the internet as I have you will know that they will see the form on the site, immediately assume they have to fill the whole thing in and then leave before they put a finger on the keypad!

    With most of my clients who who collect contact details I recommend that they only ask for Name, email address and Post or Zip codes. This will allow you to get some contact details so you can at least send an email. Some clients offer incentives but usually they settle on these three peices of information.

    If you can sontact the potential customer then at least you can send out your marketing material.

    So what do you put into the emails to get them to engage with your busienss? keep it short and direct the reader to you website. Make sure that they get information they want to read and make sure you follow all the leagal requierments that are set out in Law.

    At varius stages you can offer an incentive to complete more information by running a survey with questions that will gove you more information on the prospect. Offer a gift or some information that you know they are looking for or will make their lives easire. no sales pitches like a fre financial review. Remember what I said above about the customer get to understand them and the way they look at your business and then gove them what they want to read.

    You have not put a URL into your question so I do not know what your site is about or what you provide.

    I wish you every sucess in your endevours

    Kind regards

    Nigel T Packer
    https://www.businessforbusiness.co.uk/book

  • Posted by mgoodman on 9/17/2009 at 7:12 PM Accepted
    "Fewer fields" is better if it's high conversions you want. Why not start with two fields -- Name and Email address? Then you can experiment with adding additional fields, one at a time, to see how they affect your conversion rate. You'll find that there's an inverse relationship; as the number of fields goes up, the conversion rate goes down.

    Now it's possible that maximum conversion isn't really the right goal. You need to factor in the quality of your respondents. Perhaps you WANT to shed the window-shoppers.

    That's for you to decide.
  • Posted by arthursc on 9/17/2009 at 7:33 PM Accepted
    Everyone's right.

    Optimally, have only one field--the email address. Yet, I have never worked in a company where I was allowed to get away with that. Sales wanted demographic information. Sometimes the sign up was coupled with forum registration, so a user ID and password were required. Teams insisted on capturing the name so they could personalize (in the old fashioned sense) the emails (not very useful anymore, and often counterproductive).

    These were all bad practices, and demonstrably so, but the forces of darkness prevailed.

    Whatever information your colleagues require, as noted, get it after the sign up, after you have proved the value of your product to the subscribers. We used to call this progressive registration.

    First though, before I forget, ask if and how your colleagues are using the data in these 10 fields? I mean, often, sales teams insist on capturing demo data that they never actually use, or is ineffectual.

    One thing is sure--your abandonment rate will go up for every add'l field you have. Jodi says 20%, but Larry Chase's Web Digest (sign up this great enewsletter) uses 30%. To be clear, this means that you will lose 20-30-% of each potential subscriber from the pool left of those who didn't abandon at the prior field.

    So how to convince your no doubt skeptical colleagues that it's far better to get a higher number of eyeballs up front than deter them with non-essential data collection?

    1)Test! Can you set up a randomized A/B sign up page, one with the data they think they need, and following the advice of the other erudite responders, and one with 1-3 fields. Then for the former, do the follow up suggestions already made to capture the data later. See which ultimately gets the better results, however your company defines that (sales, web traffic, ad CTR, whatever).

    2)And if your web analytics can track abandons, get that data and show it to your colleagues. If you can track abandons at each field level, even better.

    3) As noted, from my own experience, getting buy-in on what we enewsletter folks know what works best is often difficult. If you do encounter tough resistance, there are numerous benchmark guides available with plenty of stats to back up all of us respondents' claims: Marketing Sherpa, Email Experience Council (now owned by the DMA), many major ESPS Like Mailer Mailer and Exact Target, Email Stat Center, Emaillabs, and many others.

    Good luck, Marbo.
  • Posted by Gary Bloomer on 9/17/2009 at 7:45 PM Member
    Dear Marbo,

    Click!

    That's the sound of potential leads and paying customers going elsewhere as your company barrage them with questions and mine them for data that may very well be none of your business.

    And that information may also have no relevance to your message.

    In a nutshell, ten fields of customer information to sign up for
    a newsletter is absurd.

    At the most you need only four fields: Name, address, telephone number, and e-mail. At a bare minimum: Name and e-mail address.

    THAT'S IT.

    You can always collect other, RELEVANT information later, WHEN it's required by you in order to help your customer carry out some deal or transaction. But your team's "need" to harvest all this information would appear to be unnecessary.

    I hope this helps.

    Gary Bloomer
    Wilmington, DE, USA
    Follow me on www.twitter.com @GaryBloomer



  • Posted by Neil on 9/17/2009 at 7:53 PM Member
    I remember when we, the StreamSend email marketing service, made a change to our sign up form for free trials. Immediately our conversions went way down. This is not exactly just an email sign up form but it does show what an impact forms can have.

    We let it sit for a couple days in case it was just random chance but conversions stayed low. We then switched back to the original form and conversions immediately went back up.

    The key is to change one variable, such as adding an extra field, and see what happens. If you change too many things at once, then you do not know what caused a change for the better or for the worse.

    I think mgoodman has it right, start with a minimum number of fields, add one, test, etc. Always be willing to go back to the smaller number of fields.

    Ideally, you do want to collect something about your customers so you can send them relevant emails. Good segmenting based on information your prospective customers and customers give you helps you send relevant emails. That keeps people from unsubscribing and then you lose them forever.
  • Posted by cdonald on 9/19/2009 at 7:39 PM Member
    This answer is simple, just ask for email address. Then in time give them other opportunities to download free whitepapers or other "extra" free valuable content and then you ask for additional fields.

    Over time you will collect the information that you want.

    Also, make sure your newsletter content is valuable to the recipient, not just sales heavy.

    Chris Donald
    Inbox Group
    [URL deleted by staff]
  • Posted by Mario R on 9/21/2009 at 12:35 PM Author
    Unfortunately our target audience is very specific (licensed advisors in the financial services industry), so due to regulatory and other issues, we do need to have a refined list that's targeted and vetted, not just the largest subscriber list possible. Like mgoodman states, we DO want to shed the window-shoppers, so email and full name fields only just won't cut it.

    That said, there may be a better balance using a lower number of fields during signup. I'll promote this to our team.

    Great feedback everyone. Many many thanks for all your help!
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