E-mail Form Best Practices and Customizing the Subscribe Process Mass E-mail User Group June 2009

1. E-mail Form Best PracticesandCustomizing the Subscribe ProcessMass E-mail User GroupJune 2009

2. Part I: Forms in e-mail • Desired outcome: a form is submitted • Usually, the form is linked to in the message • The forms are on Web pages (HTML) • E-mail can have an HTML part • Why not embed that form in the e-mail itself? • Great idea!

3. Example: form in e-mail • First, scroll past the plug for their cookies. • A single field to submit an address for forward-to-a-friend.

4. Does it work? Campaign Monitor “Given the sporadic support for forms in emails, we recommend linking to a form on a website rather than embedding it in the email.” continued http://www.campaignmonitor.com/resources/entry/674/using-forms-in-email/

5. Does it work? Campaign Mon. II “This is the safest, most reliable solution to pairing an email message with a form. More people will see it and be able to use it, and as a result participation will increase.” http://www.campaignmonitor.com/resources/entry/674/using-forms-in-email/

6. Does it work? Lyris HQ “At Lyris we always recommend directing your users to an outside Web page to submit their survey or form. [...] ...while forms may work in some email clients their days are numbered. Moving your forms to an outside Web page gives you the greatest chance of success.” http://www.lyrishq.com/index.php/Blog/The-Form-Debate.html

7. Does it work? MailChimp Writing on surveys in HTML e-mail: “Surveys are basically web forms. And forms don’t work so great when you send them in HTML email.” http://www.mailchimp.com/articles/how_to_send_surveys_via_html_email/

8. What’s the problem? • Some clients disable forms • Some clients identify them as possible scams and warn or filter to spam folders • Some servers block or filter to spam folders • Some clients just don’t work

9. What’s the problem? II • Forms don’t go in the plain text part • Think students, think GopherMail • Expect a high rate of non-functioning forms • Hotmail won’t work and had a 15% market share in March 2009 • Outlook 2003, 2007 and Yahoo! Classic also fail http://www.campaignmonitor.com/stats/email-clients http://www.campaignmonitor.com/resources/entry/674/using-forms-in-email/

10. In short • Link to forms on the Web • If you absolutely need to know who submitted a form, ask them, pass data into the form using the URL, and recombine the results with recipient information • A single text field, as in the Girl Scouts example, might work but could also disservice and frustrate recipients

11. Questions? ?

12. Part II:Customizing the Subscribe Process

13. Subscription best practices • Getting users to subscribe to a publication or other e-mail channel is preferred over opt-out messaging • Subscriptions can be Web or e-mail based • E-mail based (un)subscribes, at least with Lyris, can be tricky for some users • Web forms are the ticket

14. Subscription best practices II • Double opt-in (also known as confirmed opt-in) should always be used • Adhere to CAN-SPAM requirements for messages sent to subscribers • Update language in message from “opt-out” to “unsubscribe” when using an opt-in list

15. Our needs • The standard confirmation and hello messages are too generic • We were missing an opportunity to drive people toward subscribing to other e-mail publications of the University News Service • This doesn’t apply to opt-out situations, only opt-in lists/publications

16. The default messages • What is urel_uns-todays_news? Confirmation Hello

17. General problems • List names aren’t useful for your average reader (urel_uns-todays_news) • The e-mail commands can be problematic • A signature block can cause a request to not be processed • The messaging from Lyris when this happens is frustrating

18. Create a subscription form

19. Create a subscription form II

20. Create a subscription form III

21. Create a subscription form IV

22. Create a subscription form V

23. Using the form I - submit

24. Using the form II - confirm We can do better!

25. Using the form III - confirmed We control the web page you land on following this page.

26. Using the form IV – hello doc We can do better here, too!

27. Create a new conf. message • Use plain text only • Keep it succinct

28. New confirm content I

29. New confirm content II • Name the content • Tweak themessageheaders

30. New confirm content III • Brevity and clarity is key

31. Create a new hello message • This can be multipart. • You can track the message but... where do those numbers go? • In short: • confirm that they’re subscribed • introduce them to the identity right away • drive them to your site & other subscriptions

32. Create a new hello message II • Same basic process as the confirm content

33. Associate the content

34. Test, test, test • Subscribe • Confirm • Hello • Voila! http://www1.umn.edu/news/subscribe/UR_CONTENT_096484.html

35. What of unsubscribes? • Unsubscribe confirmation and goodbye messages can be customized, too • Recipients using an unsubscribe link in the e-mail should not receive a confirmation e-mail • Using an open (unauthenticated) web form can send a confirmation message for opt-in lists only

36. Unsubscribes II • You’re losing a reader • You can try to reengage them in the goodbye message • The primary, central, “above-the-fold” purpose of the message needs to be informational, e.g., “You have unsubscribed from _______.”

37. What to take away • Provide a Web form to take in subscriptions • For anything open to the public this is a no-brainer • And it’s easy

38. Takeaways II • You can’t readily get at tracking data for the hello/goodbye messages • But they’re relatively quick to customize • Quick wins can be good • Squander no opportunity; engage your audience and identify yourself at every turn

39. Engage! Not in the mood to argue fair use: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PatrickStewart2004-08-03.jpg

40. Questions? ?