Are you missing a great opportunity?

If you are doing an email newsletter and have a sign up form then you should be sending a "thank you" email when people sign up. If you aren’t you are both being a bit rude in not saying thank you and missing a brilliant opportunity to build the relationship.


If you send the standard reply, along the lines of “thank you for signing up for our email newsletter” it is time to rethink and rework.


First, make sure your thank you goes immediately. Any decent email newsletter software will send out an automated thank you as soon as somebody signs up. If you aren’t using a system then make sure your system sends out the thank you straight away and that its automated so it doesn’t create work.


Say thank you for signing up, and if you can personalize the email with Dear @firstname@. If you have a personal email style then sign the email from a person and add a signature. Whatever the style of the enews they have signed up for should be replicated in the thank you.


Thank you emails have the highest open rate, so take the opportunity to get a really important message across. Tell them how they can help, how much their support means, tell them a story about what you do and make them feel like part of it.

Take the opportunity to mention ways they can support you or get involved in whatever way suits your cause. Keep the thank you email up to date with the latest ask or campaign. Add a banner for the latest event. And include a link to something they can do next, some other way to participate.

Finally make sure you include an unsubscribe, clearly you don’t want them to, but it builds up trust. If you want to really impress include a “received this in error” link in the body of the email rather than the normal unsubscribe in the footer. Include a link to your website privacy policy to reassure them you have one and make sure it covers how you handle their data, whether you share/sell, and that you are registered with the DPA.


Whatever you do, make sure you are doing something that will build the relationship more than a bog standard "thank you".