Opt-In Forms - What Data Should You Collect?

The question about the "right amount of questions" to ask of people signing up to your opt-in form is a tough one to answer, we get it all the time. Then we have to give the lame answer "that depends." But it's true, it does depend. It depends on what you really need for your business. There are varying degrees of data collection methods, here I've attempted to outline a few.

Quantity

If your business relies on sheer quantity and "just ok" quality of email addresses then you might only ask for email address and maybe first name if you want to ever personalize your email marketing campaigns. For our own newsletter this is what we do here at VerticalResponse.

VR customer BetterWall asks for only the email address because they're going for quantity. They probably will try to convert their subscribers to purchasers at a later date.

Quality

If you need your email addresses to be quality and be "real" verified email address, than a double opt-in verification or a CAPTCHA can be used.

Postal Address - Some businesses need a full address because they'll be sending postal mail to them. If you do need this make sure to make it required so your visitor can't leave the form without filling it out. What's also great about getting a postal address is if your recipients email bounces you can send them a direct mail piece asking them to call you and update it.

If you're not going to be sending your recipients anything by mail but want to know their location, you might want to just ask for postal code. Then you can do free zip code lookups with tools like the ones Melissa Data provides.

Phone Number - Phone numbers can be especially important if you need to call your customers at any given point to confirm something. And just like gathering postal information, you can call them if their email bounces to get an update. Expect to get a percentage of people giving bogus information as well, but many won't especially if you give them the reason why you're asking for it.

Product Interest - We have many customers who want to market to their recipients by the product or service they have an interest in.

Duckhorn Vineyards does a great job at telling their visitors why certain fields are required and asks what varietals they'd like to receive information about.

Age - Asking for age, again depending on the business might be a bit tricky. One way around this is by having a birthday club where you give something to your registrant as a gift. It can be in the form of a discount or something free.

Danger Zone Data - Credit Card information, household income & gender can all be a bit personal and turn off your registrant especially if they're required. Expect a lot of bogus information here if you're asking for it, there are just too many scams going on online and people are generally afraid.

Testing

If you can set up two different opt in forms. For one month show the opt in form with less data required and count how many email addresses you collect. Then in the following month show the opt in form where you ask for more information. At the end of the two months compare the two for what your business needs are and see if you got more email addresses from one month to another and if asking for more information deterred visitors from signing up.

Got any ideas for collecting information that you've learned? Share!

Comments

[Colby]

Simple. Name, Email - Eveything else is optional. Other, non-intrusive questions can be presented, like where did you find us, but keep those to 1 or 2 and let them know they are optional.

[Steve Bowden]

When using the VR opt-in form, the form builder does not offer the ability to create a custom field that is a list (drop-down). This makes it difficult to ask for things like "How did you hear about us", "What are your interests", etc.

Are there plans to add this ability in the future?

[Email Marketing Perth]

My first rule-of-thumb is to KISS, well KIASAP - Keep It As Simple As Possible. Also, CAPTCHA can be difficult for the visually impaired (even me sometimes) so we tend to use the hidden-field approach. The hidden field gets validated on submit and if it contains input then clearly we're dealing with a spambot (since our human visitors don't even know the hidden field is there).

[Sergey]

Thanks for tips. this is not top secret, but it was helpful for me.

[Richard Rost]

Be careful of asking for ETHNICITY. I asked for it once and got TONS of complaints. I wasn't trying to discriminate - I just wanted to know where to spend my advertising dollars. For example, if I received a lot of African American signups, I might spend more advertising dollars on magazines tailored to the black market segment. But... some people found it offensive that I asked for ethnicity at all.

[Nerida Gill]

What about asking for information on how they heard about you to get an idea of your return on investment for marketing.