Tuesday, 2 November 2010, 10:37 PM

Awesome Subscription Flow

I found something for you to feast your eyes on. This is nice.

So, I said before that I would love to see more newsletters with a consistent “language” and thought behind it. The point is, that it has to make sense to the reader, they need to be able to easily find the “subscribe” or “unsubscribe” buttons for example. Here is a perfect example of this… Even though this is a newsletter entirely about photography they didn’t flood it with pictures, since many may be blocked anyway.

I went to the MailChimps blog and they were talking about this letter. LeahAndMark.com is the brains behind this newsletter. Very simple, and very well thought out.

Below is a screenshot of their website, you can see how easy they’ve made it for you to register for the newsletter, front and top center, staring at you. They even slyly tell you that it comes every week.

When you click “Newsletter/Weekly”, a big picture shows up with all the logical reasons why you should register. Then a tempting video to make anyone slightly interested in photography scramble for the subscribe button. I’m sold.

This is interesting, they give you examples of what their newsletters look like.

They don’t ask for more than your name and email address. Simple, easy. LeahAndMark want to have a list of people who really want their email, so they use double opt-in. This means that they send you an email with a link in it that you have to click on to tell them that you really want to subscribe. This is something that a lot of email marketers are afraid to do because they don’t want to risk it being missed. But, this is a great example of how to make it easy for us to actually CLICK … And, it’s all in HTML 🙂 Not in the standard text version that all of the suppliers think we should use.

Then they tell you that you’re “Almost Finished…”, so you know to go and check your email to confirm it. And that’s it, bye bye long and terrifying forms to fill out.

So what’s that confirm email look like? For one, there’s no mistaking who it’s from with the mammoth sized “Email by LeahAndMark.com” link. It’s pretty clear what to do next, and I happily … Click.

Soon as I click… Bling… I have an email in my inbox confirming that I… confirmed, and am now a subscriber. I’m also reminded of how “awesome” the email is and of course how often it will come.

It’s not over yet… A little later I get an email where they remind me of what personal info I gave to them… and brace yourselves people… they show me how to unsubscribe! It’s genius, because now I know how easy it is to take myself off the list, which means I’ll stay for infinity and beyond.

And they don’t hide how to get a hold of them. In fact, if you peek at the bottom of the email, they include a “LeahAndMark.com.vcf” file, which is a contact file you can add to your desktop contacts etc. Crazy!

So, what makes this so awesome?

They have the same ”language” and design in ALL of their letters – this means security and trust.
Clarity – this gives them a quality list of subscribers that really want their newsletters.
They have personal style that reminds me of blog language without losing its seriousness – creating a relationship with the reader.
All of the necessary communication was there during your peak interest.
They adapted to email’s limitations and possibilities.

I get so happy when I see this! What they’ve done here doesn’t mean endless wisdom and intelligence, but it does show that it’s brilliantly thought out, and they really want to take good care of their followers… I’m kind of in love…

Thanks LeachAndMarket.com!
Sign up and see what they look like!