Reggie's Articles appearing in Other Publications

Email permissions: Have you taken the best advantage of online communication?

Subscription Marketing, January/February 2008

Publishers’ Web sites play an important strategic role.  They extend the brand, allow for deeper content communication, provide the ability for interaction and contribute to the growth of subscriptions.  Plus, they provide the opportunity for publishers to open the lines of communication with subscribers and visitors when consumers provide permission to receive emails.  Growing a list of email addresses should be an important objective for any publisher.

I recently conducted an audit of multiple sites from fifteen major US consumer publishers.  I wanted to see how they collect information from site visitors and what type of permission these publishers received that would allow them to communicate on a variety of levels via email.  The primary vehicle publishers use to begin the permission dialog is to promote their email newsletters.  Permission doesn’t end with a subscription to the newsletter (or in some cases the multiple newsletters a publisher may offer for a particular brand).  Most of these publishers also ask for the ability to communicate on a variety of other levels.

Where is the email newsletter promoted?

I was surprised to find publishers differ from consumer marketers in that publishers do not generally give high visibility to email newsletters on their websites. 

I focused primarily on the home page and divided the page into several sections:

-  Top navigation (before content)
-  Above the fold (viewable without scrolling down)
-  Below the fold
-  The footer


Here is where our fifteen publishers promote their email newsletters:

•  One-third in top navigation
•  Forty percent below the top navigation but above the fold
•  Thirty percent below the fold
•  Almost two-thirds in the footer


I should note that many publishers use more than one piece of home page real estate to promote their email program.  Three of the titles only used the footer to promote their newsletter.  But, in general, the footer is a workhorse area for publishers.  Not only do the majority use the footer to promote their newsletter, but they also use this area to provide links to subscribe to the magazine, give a gift subscription, customer service help and even the chance to renew. 

What permission is requested?

Here’s a summary of my findings in terms of the types of permission requested:

•  70% ask permission for the magazine publisher to send emails of interest
•  40% ask permission to send advertising emails from third parties
•  30% ask permission to send offers and promotions for other publications the company offers
•  30% ask for permission to send other emails from the site that might be of interest

Remember that permission online is never blanket permission.  An individual who signs up for your newsletter does not expect to receive anything else from you – without permission.  If you don’t have a tiered permission structure, it’s time to put one in place. 

This opens up a world of choices for you.  With permission you can aggressively sell magazine subscriptions or generate addition revenues by promoting external offers from your top advertisers.

How is permission received?

Of course, there should be full disclosure of what the individual is signing up for.  A best practice is to provide the ability to opt-in, which means that choices are NOT pre-checked.  But some publishers do pre-check options and rely on the informed consumer to opt-out by de-selecting a choice if they so desire.

Here’s how our fifteen publishers stack up on choice. 

•  Of those who ask permission for the magazine publisher to send emails of interest roughly two-thirds pre-check the choice
•  Of those who ask permission to send advertising emails from third parties half pre-check the choice
•  Of those who ask permission to send offers and promotions for other publications the company offers two-thirds pre-check the choice
•  Of those who ask permission to send other emails from the site that might be of interest half pre-check the choice

The illustration above is a best practices example from Time Magazine who offers two newsletters, the opportunity to receive other emails from the site and advertising emails.  Note:   none of the choices is pre-checked.

Take the time to compare your own site to my audit findings.  Are you making full use of your site to promote your email initiatives?  And, are you extending your ability to communicate with your constituency group by asking for various types of permission?  If not, make plans to do so.  I promise you’ll have a more productive list that will pay dividends to you in the future. 

Reggie Brady is president of Reggie Brady Marketing Solutions, a direct and e-mail marketing consultancy. She can be reached at (203) 838-8138 or reginabrady@att.net.

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