How to Optimize E-Mail List Growth, Part 2
Starting to complete a Web registration for is one thing, completing it is quite another.
Starting to complete a Web registration for is one thing, completing it is quite another.
In my last column, we talked about conversion rate — the percentage of Web site visitors who supply their email addresses and opt in to receive email from you. The next natural step is to look at the abandon rate on your registration page.
What’s Your Abandon Rate?
Abandon rate is defined as the number of people who complete your registration divided by the total number of people who start the process. Put simply, it’s a gauge of how many people were interested in registering but didn’t complete the process; typically the cause is something in your registration process is turning them off.
Abandon rates vary widely and not many people track them, making it difficult to get averages either overall or by industry. Those who do track it tend to keep their numbers close to the vest. So how do you figure out if it’s a problem? Look at the number of people who abandon each month. Though it’s unlikely you’ll get this number to zero, if the figure is significant you’ll want to see what you can do to get it down.
The highest abandon rate I’ve heard of is 90 percent. Yes, 90 percent. So 9 of every 10 people who started the registration process didn’t finish it. If the company could just get it down to 80 percent (still high) its monthly growth would double. This is a case where the payback for decreasing the abandon rate only nominally is quite significant.
Decreasing Your Abandon Rate
There are some simple and inexpensive things you can do to address a high abandon rate. Here are five:
Other common things to ask in business-to-business (B2B) applications are industry segment or subsegment and job title or function. Typically a drop-down menu is used for these last two to make it quicker for the registrant and easier to analyze the data. In a business-to-consumer (B2C) world, you might ask something about interests relevant to your offering.
Did Mickey Mouse Sign Up for Your List?
Abandonment is one common problem with registration pages. Another is bad data. If you ask for too much information or information that’s too sensitive, people will lie. Of course, this makes the data pretty much worthless. Be thankful for those people who lie in an obvious way — using Mickey and Mouse as their first and last names. The bigger issue is those who lie in a non-obvious way — the 32-year-old director-level female who says she’s an unemployed 50-year-old man to avoid sales pitches. What’s that old saying — garbage in, garbage out? Don’t give your subscribers a reason to misrepresent themselves.
Next Steps
Once you feel you have acceptable levels of conversion and a reasonably low abandon rate, it’s time to invest money in driving more traffic to your site to get them to subscribe. Don’t waste your money on it before you’ve made your tweaks to lower the abandon rate. Take a look at your registration process and see if there isn’t a simple, inexpensive way you can boost your growth rate. Let me know what you find.
Until next month,
Jeanne