Taking a look at QuickenLoans.com I will be doing a two part series on their email opt-in process and a particular delivery.
To kick things off, let’s look at some elements of their online sign-up. There are a lot of email opportunities for Quicken Loans. For first time buyers in particular, a great deal of education is desired to help them guide through the process. Even for seasoned borrowers, there are opportunities for education, rate announcement, market news and more (not to mention cross-sell opportunities for other products in the Quicken family). As many home buyers are shopping around, email is critical to keep the brand top-of-mind and help nurture the sale.
When going to sign-up for their email list, a few good things were going on but there were also some areas of improvement:
1. Where to Sign Up? On the home page there was no clear option to sign-up. You have to click on About Us and then Email Alerts. This is a key area of improvement: make it easy to sign up! Steve Krug notes says this well in his book title: Don’t Make Me Think. It’s inevitable that there are some lost opportunities here.
2. Sign Up Page: (1st screen grab below). Some nice things here. First, it’s very user-friendly w/ email address and two preference options. The Rate Alert was a very cool feature! You can select your desired rate to receive notification when it is available. I was excited to see this in action. While there could have been a few more preference options or opportunities to collect data for further personalization, it was a decent sign-up page.
3. Thank You Page: (2nd screen grab below).
A. Starting off with the good: I like how they have 5 links for “Looking for info Right Now?” — Direct users to helpful information and keep them active on the site. Nice job.
B. One piece of copy though that threw me off: “…you’ll receive your requested emails as soon as we write them” – To me that sounds a bit lazy and uncertain. On the sign-up page I thought I was signing up for the monthly newsletter and rate alerts. So wouldn’t it be more relevant to say something like: “…you’ll receive your information packed newsletter each month and rate alerts as soon as they become available!”
C. Finally, there was no confirmation email — or welcome email. I’m not 100% sure I was added to the list, and I’m waiting for a welcome email! This welcome message is a great opportunity as open rates will be sky-high and you can kick the relationship off on a positive note.
Sign Up Page – Click to Enlarge
Thank You Page – Click to Enlarge
While they are off to a decent start, there are several areas of improvement that will quickly improve the QuickenLoans sign-up process. In Part 2 we’ll discuss the first email received.
Cheers,
Forest
Questions or inputs? Feel free to leave a comment or shoot me an email.
At the end of the day, everyone should naturally implement these practices. We want to provide relevant content to individuals who want to receive it, and provide a nice user experience with transparency. On a strategic note, the need to have better data for Canada subscribers may sound like a pain, but embrace it as it could create some very interesting segmenting opportunities.
