After reviewing email from 230 tourism and travel businesses, I found that over 40% of businesses fail to engage customers after subscription.
One particular characteristic of this lack of engagement is the way that businesses speak with organisationally centric language by saying ‘thank you’ and abruptly end the customer journey in response to a subscription.
When the subscription journey finishes with a ‘thank you’ it’s an incomplete experience. Here’s how it looks.
Subscribers aren’t subscribing to help you out – so why would you only give a thanks message in response and end the conversation? They’re subscribing because they see value in staying connected.
Think about the way a classic email subscription flow looks like.
Visitor to website > Enticed to subscribe, promise of getting news or offers > Subscription… [next steps]
Why does the person subscribe? Because they’re shown that there would be value in receiving an email. Ending the flow at ‘Subscription’ fails to understand why the subscriber has signed up in the first place.
They’re after something that you have to give. Don’t just end it with a thanks, and be on your merry way.
Follow up immediately with something reinforcing the value that you’ve sold to them. They have given you permission. It could be as simple as where to follow you on social media if they want to explore more in real time, or further information about your business, or even a commonly valued piece of content that you can share with the subscriber.
The thank you piece ends the interaction by saying, “This was actually about me – not you. Now you’ll have to wait until we finally get around to finishing our newsletter that we’ll do some time when we feel like getting around to it.”