Email Newsletter Signup Conversion Rate

Email Signup Conversion Rate Benchmark

There are many components of your business that must be considered to benchmark your Newsletter Signup Conversion Rate. Also known as email capture rate (ECR), experts suggest that a 2% or more ECR is healthy.

Newsletter Signup Conversion Rate Best Practices

Ryan Stewart, Founder, WEBRIS

• If your newsletter form does not redirect to a thank you page on submission, you’ll have to set up Event tracking. However, once an Event is created, it can be tracked as a Goal. I strongly recommend converting all Events to Goals because the depth of reporting is 100 times better.

Peep Laja, Founder, ConversionXL

• People like to be in control. Submitting the form without knowing what exactly is going to happen creates uncertainty. Uncertainty causes friction. The worst thing your submit button can say is ‘submit’. The best way is to make the submit button say what’s going to happen.

• Less is more. Every field you ask them to fill increases friction. The best thing you can do to improve conversions is to get rid of as many fields as possible. In most cases, you don’t need to ask for anything but the email address.

  In one study, an 11-field version of a contact form was replaced with a 4-field version, resulting in a 160% increase in the number of forms submitted and a 120% increase in conversion while the quality of submissions stayed the same.

  In another test 5-field form outperformed the 9-field form by 34%. Again, they didn’t complain about the data quality, as people lie in long forms anyway.

Cindy Alvarez, Director of User Experience, Yammer

Why are visitors not signing up on my website? Things to think about:

• Timing: Interrupting people before they’ve had some time to orient themselves and skim your site is perceived as rude. Asking questions after someone has left your site yields a very low response rate, and people may not remember the specific questions or concerns they had.
• Placement: You want input from people who have demonstrated interest in your site — not just “drive-bys.” For that reason, the homepage is often not the best place to ask your question. Pricing/plans pages are often better; fewer people see them, but they’re the people who are your most likely customers.
• Wording: Ask a yes-no question, and you’ll get a “yes” or “no” answer – not very helpful. I’ve also found that asking “why” (as in “Why aren’t you signing up?”) is perceived as accusatory. I’ll provide some suggested wordings below, but I strongly recommend iterating on your question text to see what subtle variations lead to more useful responses.

How to Monitor Newsletter Signup Conversion Rate in Real-time

Once you have established metrics for measuring Newsletter Signup Conversion Rate, you’ll want to establish processes to monitor this and other marketing KPIs. Dashboards can be critical in this regard.

Learn more about how to track your Newsletter Signup Conversion Rate on a Digital Marketing Dashboard.

Newsletter Signup Conversion Rate: Top Resources

14 Steps to Building Sign-up Forms That Convert, Peep Laja

The 7 High-Converting Places to Add Email Sign-Up Forms to Build Your List, Social Triggers

What 300 Million Pop-ups Taught Us About Email Signup Rates, Sarah Peterson

How Does Your Email Capture Rate Compare to Other Publishers?, Amanda MacArther

For a broader understanding of key performance indicators in the digital landscape, check out other digital marketing metrics that will help you optimize your campaigns beyond "Email Newsletter Signup Conversion Rate."