Shopping the other day at my local Trader Joe’s store, I was delighted to see a large sign on my way out informing shoppers of the TJ Email Newsletter!
I love how they are trying to encourage opt-in at the store locations with this signage. They also give a sneak peak at content to expect (New Items, Grand Openings, Recipes), which is a good move.
Below are a few suggested improvements
1. Drop Box: Why not have a drop box attached so people can leave their business card or have a pen and paper to leave their email address? Yes, this would create more work for someone to manually enter info, and there could be some errors in transcription, but you could still send a confirmation email requiring action to subscribe. By just having the signage you are relying on people to actually go to the site and sign up.
2. Sign-up at Checkout: Better yet, why not have store personnel ask if you would like to join the email list while you are paying for your groceries? The technology is there to integrate, and a patron could have a nice welcome email by the time they get home!
3. Incentive: Recipes and new items are cool, but offering something nice to encourage people to sign up is a good idea. List building is difficult business and many are reluctant to join new lists. But if I get 15% off my next grocery purchase, entered in a chance to win a big prize, or a plethora of other ideas, I’m much more interested to get on board.
4. Follow Through: When going to the site, it wasn’t super easy to find the sign-up. On the flash site I couldn’t find it on first run-through, and on the HTML site I believe it was only apparent as a text link in their main copy. If you are not going to get the sign-up at the actual store (highly recommended) then make sure it’s quick and easy to do so on the site. — that should go without saying…
Thoughts or questions? Feel free to leave a comment below or shoot me an email.
Cheers,
Forest
