It has been a while since I wrote a post to Topliners (and truthfully, my Topliners points are craving my return to the top 100!) so I pondered about a topic that is very important but may not get all the credit it deserves. Your subscription management strategy should be just as important as your creative lead generation campaigns, but many companies still have limited to no options on how contacts are communicated to and their ability to determine their preferences. Hopefully this post has you review your current subscription strategy and opens the door for a review or optimization of your existing process.
This immediately got me thinking - what are some great resources, examples that I have shared with clients to help them along this path! I can not take all the credit as there have been folks before me that have talked in length about this so I figured I would share some of these awesome resources. To end, I will share my secret sauce to subscription management success.
I start with my colleague, Steve Kellogg from who boldly demonstrated in a great blog two great examples of Email Subscription Centers that allow the end user to determine how they want to be communicated with. His examples though very different still provide a good resource to get your company thinking!
I found this blog post from HAVAS DISCOVERY which immediately connected with me as the purpose of a subscription center is to allow the contact to "Opt-Down and no Globally Opt-Out" by providing options that clearly speak to your companies areas of interest and determine communication frequency levels.
When thinking subscription management here are my top 5 items to consider:
- How easy is it for someone to determine how often they would like to be communicated to?
- How user friendly is your subscription center?
- Are you giving your contacts several things to unsubscribe from or are they only given a global opt out? (there is no magic number here, you just need to find the 'sweet spot' between cumbersome and clunky and non-existent)
- Is there an opportunity for the contact to update their existing profile?
- Are you currently marketing to countries in Europe? If yes, is your subscription management compliant with European laws?
I'd love to hear your feedback and thoughts on what your organizations are doing. If you have pages you'd like to share, myself and I trust the community would appreciate it!
Thanks -
Jason Pemberton
Director, Key Accounts
Verticurl
