Why You Should Never Ask Visitors To "Subscribe" To Your Newsletter

This is embarrassing. Just a few days ago I was surfing the web on the topic of increasing subscriptions and I came across and interesting article. Problem is, I don't remember where I saw the article.

Anyway, the author showed us his new daily subscriber statistics for eight days before his test and eight days after his test. The results were impressive.

Here's what he did.
Rather than ask his visitors to subscribe to his newsletter, he asked them to join his newsletter. With that one little change he saw his opt-ins double!

He attributed this jump in opt-ins to the fact that many of his visitors thought the word "subscribe" implied that they had to pay to join. This was a free newsletter.

The author went on to wonder if this was true and discussed surveying his members on the subject, which he never did. So guess what? I did the survey for him and here's what I discovered.

I submitted the question on Ask 500 People .com

Quote:

When you see the word "Subscribe" on the Internet, do you associate it with having to spend money?

With 109 people answering the question so far the results stand at:

66% Yes
34% No

You can see the up-to-date results here

Lesson Learned
If you want people to sign-up for your free newsletter, don't ask them to subscribe.

Attached Images

map.jpg (48.8 KB, 414 views)