A Critical Email Marketing Share Link You May Be Missing

I received an email this morning from Persuasive Concepts and noticed something I don’t typically see in email marketing newsletters. As you can see in the image below, Persuasive Concepts added a “Subscribe Here” button to the bottom of the email. At first glance, you might wonder why you’d have a “Subscribe Here” button on an […] The post A Critical Email Marketing Share Link You May Be Missing appeared first on VMR. A Critical Email Marketing Share Link You May Be Missing was first posted on June 20, 2012 at 6:06 pm.©2015 "VMR". Use of this feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this article in your feed reader, then the site is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact me at hugh@vmrcommunications.com

I received an email this morning from Persuasive Concepts  and noticed something I don’t typically see in email marketing newsletters. As you can see in the image below, Persuasive Concepts added a “Subscribe Here” button to the bottom of the email. At first glance, you might wonder why you’d have a “Subscribe Here” button on an email that has been sent to someone who is already subscribed to your e-newsletter. But if you think about it, it does make sense because it is entirely possible that the person who originally received this email forwards it to a friend either using the “Forward this email to a friend” link or simply by clicking “Forward” using their email client app. So for example, if I forwarded this email to my friend James, he would not be added to my email marketing list. Nor should he be if you want your business to be CAN-SPAM compliant. But what if James sees the email you sent him and wants to subscribe as well? Is there a link like the one highlighted in red below that he can click on if he chooses to subscribe?

Personally, I think a “Subcribe” link is something that should be on every email marketing template. What surprises me is how few email marketing platforms offer this link by default.

What do you think? Are there potential downsides to adding such a link or do you agree with me that it really is a no brainer if you want one more effective, CAN-SPAM compliant way to grow your email marketing database? I’d love to hear from email marketing platforms as to whether they think adding this link makes good sense and whether their platform allows for this functionality to be easily added to their templates.

Does CampaignMonitor offer this functionality by default? ConstantContact ? MailChimp ?  Vertical Response ? Infusionsoft ? Icontact ? Others? Should they? What sort of results have email marketers gotten from using this approach to grow their list? Do these providers provide a way to track how many of my new subscribers are coming from the “Was this email forwarded to you by a friend…Subscribe Here” link? Can I track which of my initial subscribers generated the new subscribers through this link? Perhaps even see the connection between the two subscribers in my email analytics?

The post A Critical Email Marketing Share Link You May Be Missing appeared first on VMR.

A Critical Email Marketing Share Link You May Be Missing

VMR