Incentives can be an effective way to convince your users to subscribe to your newsletter. They can even help to attract new customers and generate additional revenue (e.g. free shipping for first orders). In this article we will introduce you to various incentives.

What are Incentives

Incentives are attractions that can take many forms. One can differentiate between incentives that the user receives for signing up for the newsletter and incentives that are created by the newsletter itself. 

Incentives for the registration

You can reward the pure act of subscribing to the newsletter in various ways. These include:

  • Vouchers (e.g. a voucher for free delivery with your next order)
  • Discounts (e.g. an absolute discount of 10 Euro or a relative discount of 5% on the next order) 
  • Free product samples (e.g. a free trial month, sample packs for cosmetics, a free software add-on, etc.)

So you can find incentives for almost all industries that you can offer your users. Especially for online shops, incentives are a very popular and easy to implement tool, which is very well accepted by users. Many users secure discounts before their first order, which they receive by subscribing to the newsletter. Once the user has subscribed to your newsletter, this gives you the chance to convince in the future with the content and additional features of your newsletter (and of course with your performance)! How this could look like, you will find out in the following section.

Incentives through registration

The continuous use/reading of the newsletter can also offer the user incentives. For example, you can present new releases in your product range first via your newsletter and thus give newsletter subscribers the chance to secure the products first.  Cinema operators, for example, can inform about the latest releases and direct subscribers directly to the seat reservation. Concert promoters can give the first ticket allotments to newsletter subscribers, etc. Incentives through the registration are thus for example:

  • Advance offers from your shop
  • Earlier delivery of news and exclusive information
  • Delivery of remaining stock or last-minute offers of which only a few are still available

Prominently advertise your newsletter

To ensure that your customers also learn about your newsletter, you should advertise it prominently on your website. Don’t just hide it as a sub-item in the footer, because after all, you are offering your users real added value here and you have invested a lot of work in it. Test different possibilities.

Source: Joop

Conclusion

Newsletters are an extremely important channel in email marketing. Incentives can be used to encourage users to subscribe to your newsletter. This gives you a regular and recurring opportunity to offer them your products and services. Place the reference to your newsletter prominently on your website and communicate the added value clearly.