Give Them What They Want: Preference Center Do’s And Don’ts

As we’ve written many times before, targeted segmentation is key if you want to provide the most relevant email content and offers to your subscribers, and keep them subscribed for the long haul (right, J.Crew?). The holiday season looming and inboxes getting more crowded by the competition (the competition is everyone else who sends your subscriber email, not just your direct competitors!). Now is the time to start collecting preference data, so you can act on it.

But where to start? Here’s a handy list of do’s and don’ts for kick-starting your segmentation efforts and revamping (or creating) your preference center.

• DO start from the beginning. If you don’t have one, add a preference center to your signup / opt-in process to start collecting this data right from the start of your relationship with new subscribers. If you do have one, take a second look and make sure you’re asking them for the most pertinent information.
• DON’T ask for too much too soon. Start with asking for their email address, then take them to a secondary page where they can give you more info on their interests and demographics. Be careful not to make too many fields required, as this could drive up abandonment. hhgregg does a great job of not asking for too much, and explaining why they want certain data like phone number.
• DO allow them to set frequency preferences.  It’s better to lose a subscriber from your weekly email but keep them on your monthly newsletter list than to lose them altogether. Offer them options to receive less email or identify your different message types as daily, weekly, monthly, etc. to set those expectations up front and ensure they know what they’re getting. Check out this opt-down option on Saks Fifth Avenue’s preference center, and what a great job BabyCenter does of spelling out their newsletter frequency and content types.
• DON’T ignore your mobile device users. Give them the option to choose what format they would like to receive emails in – plain text or HTML. They may be a small subset of your list now, but are an ever-growing population to always be mindful of.
• DO promote your preference center in your regular email marketing, by having a prominent link in your regular template (like this one from Kirkland’s).  If possible, incentivize subscribers to update their information – this can be done at signup or as a special campaign to your entire list.  You can use a bold call-to-action in your welcome messages (see these examples from The Gap, and Old Navy) or hold an ongoing contest like this $500 gift card giveaway from hhgregg.

Have you seen any great preference centers out there that you admire? Do you have any questions or stumbling blocks in your effort to create your own center or incentive campaign?  Please share in the comments below.

Julie Waite
Email Marketing Strategist at Bronto

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Tagged as: Email Marketing Best Practices, frequency, opt-in, preference center, segmentation, targeting