I’m always on the look out for examples of good practice in email marketing. So when I visited my local Makro cash & carry store to top up the office coffee and biscuit supplies, I was pleased to find an in store campaign to grow email subscribers.

In this post I’m looking at what Makro did and using this example sharing ideas how you can make an effective campaign to grow your email list using offline touch points.

Makro is a wholesaler to businesses and you must show your customer card to gain entrance. There was a stack of email registration forms at the entrance desk. Even better, the assistant checking my customer card explicitly explained the option to subscribe and asked if I would be interested. This was either a very diligent employee or Makro had the foresight to provide a staff incentive to encourage bringing the email subscribe offer to the shoppers attention.

Invoice rear side showing subscribe form.

Even better at the end of my shop when I’d loaded up my goodies and paid, the rear of my invoice carried a subscribe call to action too as show in the image above.

Many businesses miss the opportunity to ask for a subscription on their standard print materials. In many cases there is empty space going unused, for example the rear of receipts. Draw up a list of all the printed materials in your business and look how a subscribe call to action could be incorporated. You may be surprised at the number of free blank spaces you have. Here is a list of common print materials to get you going; leaflets, compliment slips, invoices, till receipts, business cards, flyers, discount vouchers, coupons, point of sale displays, packaging, food menus, event tickets, posters, feedback forms, brochures, print newsletters and magazines, instruction booklets, guarantee cards.

Once you’ve identified the spaces where you can put your call to subscribe, you need to think about these three questions that every potential subscriber will have:

1. What benefit is being offered to me?
2. Should I risk sharing my email address?
3. What do I need to do next?

These questions need to be answered, in that order and as simply and quickly as possible.

So how did the Makro subscribe form answer these questions? Let’s have a look at the actual form I picked up.

The front side of the instore subscribe form.

The rear side of the instore subscribe form.

• Front side has the benefit stated ‘Exclusive offers’
• Rear side includes two more benefits, ‘Tailored offers’ and ‘News & Information’
• It states ‘We promise not to bombard you – we typically send one email every week’
• The action to take is given, to register online or complete paper form and return to store.

The three key questions are covered and in the right order on the left side of the form rear. The promise not to bombard and the ‘tailored offers’ helps to reduce  reader anxiety that they will receive lots of emails. It makes them more comfortable to share their email address.

How about trying to improve this form?

• The front side copy puts the headline as Click!, rather than the benefit of Exclusive offers. Attention would be better grabbed with the benefit coming first.
• To further reduce the anxiety of sharing an email address, the bombard statement could be made stronger “We promise to look after your email address, we won’t share it or bombard you – typically we send weekly”. The small print does say the email address won’t be shared, but the small print won’t be read.
• The text top right repeats the benefit but not consistently, missing the key exclusive offers. This text looks awkward, redundant and may even confuse.
• The card is laid out in a way that does not control the eye path, so not all people will read the text in the same order. This means we are not certain of getting our message across in the order we want.
• The instruction to return the card to the store would be better placed at the bottom by the signature and date. The point at which the information is needed.
• The box for the email address is too small. A typical email address is 25 characters and space should be allowed for up to 50.  The small space will cause squashed writing and impair data entry. This could wipe out 15% of the captured email addresses as not usable.

To address these challenges the card layout needs to be changed to improve flow, control the reading order and give more space for the email address.

Next time you see a paper based data collection form, take a good look and think about the questions you are asking yourself, how it answers them and the flow of the form.

It’s easy to see a form from the customers view when you aren’t intimately related to the offer and purpose. Viewing your own form through the eyes of a customer is much harder. So for your own form find a few colleagues, friends or customers. Given them your form for 30 seconds, then take it away and ask them what they saw.

Do leave a comment if you’ve seen a good instore email subscribe campaign recently.

About the Author

Tim Watson is Email Expert and Consultant at Zettasphere Ltd. View the full bio here.

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