For years I have asked for a visitors name with my newsletter forms however when I relaunched this blog I questioned whether this was necessary. This may seem like a trivial issue however it will determine whether my newsletter list is built up with people’s names or not.
I will be using Aweber to deliver blog posts every week and announcements about products I am releasing; it will play a big part in the success, or lack of success, of this blog. As such, it was something I gave a lot of consideration to when customising the current blog design. Surprisingly, there are few discussions about this issue online (until now!).
Do you really need to know the name of a subscriber? Is it important?
Personalising Newsletters
The whole point of asking for someone’s name is to make an email more personal. Many marketers have suggested that using the subscribers name will improve response rates. I’m not so sure it does. People aren’t stupid. Most will realise that the email has been sent to thousands of people by the way it’s been written.
Some people also enter their surname or a fake name when signing up to a newsletter so if the name field is used the email can seem more like spam (remember: despite people signing up to your newsletter, many may view your emails as that). Jive Jeff spoke about this issue on Aweber in the article ‘Pros and Cons of Email Personalization‘:
If people are not consistently entering names, or entering something other than a true name like “Test,” then it could have the adverse effect of proper personalization.
It’s the kind of thing that could cause someone to unsubscribe. It may be safer to just directly to a person without using their name. David Risley talked about this recently in his post ‘This Time, Its Personal…‘:
Why do that? Just to increase the open rate a little bit?
If you get a little bit higher open rate using a tactic like that, it seems to me that short-term bump isn’t worth the long term damage to your trust factor.
David actually uses the name field in his newsletter form despite writing this article however it isn’t clear whether he is personalising his emails with the name field.
I’ve become so accustomed to reading newsletter emails that I barely even notice whether my name is not is used. It certainly doesn’t influence whether I respond to the email or not because it’s clear from the start that it’s a marketing email so whether it’s personalised or not is irrelevant. I see no difference between someone using “Hey Kevin”, “Hey Guys” or removing the greeting at the start of the email altogether.
Sign Up Rates
The main reason I wanted to remove the name field was from a sign up point of view. I’ve seen thousands of blogs that only ask for a users email address and I don’t think it has hurt them. I’ve not read any surveys which compare sign up rates to forms which include the name field but I strongly believe that only asking for a visitors email address will improve your sign up rate. The quicker a form is to complete, the more likely it is than someone will sign up for it.
With only the email field in the newsletter, it becomes easier to integrate newsletter sign up forms into your design too. You can see how I’ve done this in the header, sidebar and underneath articles.
The downside to removing the name field is that you won’t know the name of the subscriber. I don’t think this is an issue. What do you really need the name of the subscriber for? I can’t think of any worthwhile reasons other than personalising an email. Once you have converted a subscriber to a customer they are going to give you their name anyway (I think including the name in a sales email is a different issue altogether).
In the end I decided that not asking for the name was easier for visitors and would therefore increase sign up rates. I’ve got no hard evidence of whether this is true and whilst I can see both sides of the argument, personalising emails is not something that I think will hurt my email list.
To read both sides of the argument, I recommend reading the Aweber articles ‘Pros and Cons of Email Personalization‘ and ‘Should Your Sign Up Form Ask For More Than Name and Email?‘.
What fields do you include in your newsletter form?
Kevin
Hi Petr.
I cannot recall the exact article which said that subscription rates are higher. If I remember right, most of the research on this topic suggests rates are higher because you are requesting more information from people.
Kevin
Hi Kevin,
I am exactly at the point when I am considering to ask the name in the subscription form. Well, for this reason I have found your article in Google :)
One question – as you used to ask the subscriber’s name and now your readers can subscribe without entering it, do you have some numbers which would confirm the hypothesis that the subscription rate increases when we do not require the name?
haha I never thought of it that way. Use it as a way of finding the troublemakers!!!
Apparently, many people prefer to see their name and open rates are supposed to be higher. This blog is different. Everyone who reads this blog is pretty savvy with computers and knows how email newsletters work. I’m sure huge companies such as barnes and noble will see a big difference from using the name field. For smaller blogs like this, I’m not so sure.
Hi Karen,
I’m glad you found my blog. Kudos to Tiffany :)
If you’ve been using the name field for a long time, it could be worth keeping things as they are. I was creating a list for this blog from scratch (again) so it was something I had to think about. You’ll always find people who enter dummy names into the name field. The thing is, are these people who actually wanted to subscribe or just people who wanted a free ebook? I’m not sure.
If you’re doing a redesign, you may want to look over the situation again. I don’t think it’s bad if you go either way. There are few studies on this and the ones there are seem to lean towards using the name field. To me it’s a little silly as you’re only using the name they provided.
I’m still not 100% sure of the issue. If someone could inform me conclusively that using a name field was better, I’d be happy to add it back.
Kevin
I like having the name in case I see an unsubscribe – I want to know who’s leaving me so I can get my feelings hurt. LOL!
(Seriously).
I also like to have it if there’s a problem with anyone so I know who’s being a troublemaker.
But I personally like seeing “Hi Tiffany” rather than “Hey Guys” and I don’t know why. I know it’s a mass email but it looks better to me.
Hi Kevin,
I found your blog through Tiffany Dow :)
Very interesting discussion. I don’t personalise my email subject lines, because I find it annoying myself to see that in my inbox. However I do start my emails with “Hi [name]”.
I’ve just had a brief look through my subscribers in Aweber and some of them have set the Name field to the name of my newsletter, I guess so they can easily track anything they feel is spam. And a good proportion haven’t entered anything for the name field (I didn’t make it mandatory on my signup form.)
I’m going to have a rethink about my email salutations. Thanks for giving me a nudge!
Karen :)
Glad you got it. Good luck :)
I just downloaded the zip myself. All the instructions are there. There are two separate folders: one for mac and one for windows.
In each you will find a photoshop image and 7 folders. Each folder contains an images folder, a preview image and an instructions text file. All the text you need to use is in the instructions file (including HTML and CSS).
:)
The forms can be adapted to any provider. You just need to change the form details a little to accommodate it. If you play around with it, you should be able to get it working.
Hi Maria,
No they are hard coded. I created a widget area for underneath the post area. I then created widgets using HTML and placed them in the sidebar and underneath the post.
Here’s a good article that lists 7 newsletter forms: 7 Custom Aweber Email Signup Forms. All you have to do is copy the HTML and images onto your website correctly.
Kevin, thanks. I just saw that the code I need is in the instructions file. I’m used to getting the css as a separate file, that’s why I couldn’t see it. My mistake. I’ll play with it now.
That’s what I was hoping, but where’s the css? The .zip download only gave me pngs.
Kevin,
Thanks. Unfortunately, they’re not much use to me without the css. I’m with iContact and would need to create the forms myself.
Kevin, Thanks a lot for helping me understand a bit better what I should be doing with my newsletter list. At the moment the biggest problem I’ve got is that I can’t find a way of installing a signup form on my WP blog. May I ask you how you got the signup forms on the right-hand side and below the post. Are they plugins?
Yeah. A quick look at your existing email list will highlight the fact that many people don’t use their real name anyway.
You’re tackling some very interesting topics here Kevin, I’ve been thinking of things like this myself when preparing the launch of Fit For Blogging. I am in complete agreement with the idea of doing away with the name field. It is much more likely to end up looking ridiculous and more of a detriment than an advantage (think ‘Dear asdf’).