Those of us who weren’t totally convinced that offering an email newsletter as a registration benefit drew customers can read the latest survey from Belden Associates and feel reassured–email newsletters are viable incentives.
According to Belden, incorporating free e-mail newsletters as part of the site “membership” can help reduce customer resistance, particularly among women and younger users.
Belden r eports that forty-three percent of all visitors to five newspaper-affiliated sites said
they are willing to endure a one-time registration process to gain free
access to a site, compared with 29 percent who say no. The other 28 percent
aren’t sure what choice they’d make, according to Belden’s “Sales and Site
Survey” conducted in March and April of 2003.
Women and visitors between the ages of 18 and 34 expressed more interest in
e-mail newsletters than the overall set of respondents. Among the total
group of 8,801 participants, 42 percent said they were very interested in
breaking news e-mail messages, followed by messages about weekend events (35
percent), breaking weather news (35 percent), daily headline news (34
percent) and weekly coupons (25 percent).