Replace subscribe to our newsletter with a specific promise: what subscribers will get, how often, and what they will never receive. Then keep it, starting with a first email that arrives straight away.

Subscribe to our newsletter

Most small business sites have one: a box near the bottom of the page, a line saying subscribe to our newsletter, and a button.

Weeks pass and a handful of addresses arrive, some of them from staff testing the form. The owner decides customers simply do not want email.

Usually they were never given a reason. Newsletter describes a format, not a benefit, and nobody hands over an email address in exchange for a format.

The fix costs nothing. It is a sentence or two of honest description, and the discipline to live up to it.

What a visitor is weighing

An email address feels like a small thing to ask for. To the visitor it is a door into an inbox that is already too full, and the form is where they decide whether to open it.

The third is the one almost nobody writes. People hesitate because other lists have flooded them before, and a plain statement of what you will not send answers that fear directly.

Write the promise first

Before touching the form, write one sentence describing what a subscriber actually receives. If you cannot write it, there is no newsletter yet, only a list.

Specific beats general every time. A bike shop's Saturday ride schedule. A theatre's season, a week before tickets go on sale. A bakery's holiday order dates.

News and updates is not a promise. Neither is exclusive offers, unless you can say what they are and how often they come.

Try the sentence on a customer at the counter. If they would say yes out loud, it will work on the form.

How often, honestly

Visitors fill an unstated frequency with the worst case they have experienced, which is usually daily.

A number settles it: monthly, every second Tuesday, four times a year. Seasonal businesses can name the season instead, which is often more honest than pretending to a year-round schedule.

Choose the frequency you can sustain in a bad month, not the one you would manage in a good one. Adding a second email later is easier than explaining why one stopped.

What they will not get

A short line about what you will never do is unusual on a form, which is exactly why it works.

No daily sales emails. No passing your address to anyone else. Nothing outside the season. Whatever your customers dread from other lists, say plainly that yours is different, and only if it is.

A worked example

A greenhouse grower on the edge of a farming town sells bedding plants, hanging baskets and vegetable starts from its own greenhouses for about eight weeks each spring.

Its site had a footer box reading subscribe to our newsletter for news and updates. The few people who signed up received an email or two a year, whenever someone found the time.

Meanwhile the phone rang through March and April with the same two questions: when does the sale open, and are the tomatoes ready yet.

The answer was already in the greenhouse office. The grower kept a weekly availability list for its own staff.

The form became: the spring availability list, every Thursday from mid-April to mid-June, with what is ready and the weekend hours. One note in September about fall bulbs. Nothing else, and your address stays with us.

The box moved to the top of the hours page, where the people asking those questions already looked. The first Thursday list went out on the day promised, and staff answering the phone in March now mention it.

Keeping the promise

The promise on the form is the standard every email will be judged by. A monthly newsletter that arrives three times in one week, then not at all until spring, teaches people to ignore it.

Put the sending dates in the calendar for the whole season, with a name beside each. If the schedule slips for good, change the form to match rather than leave a promise standing that nobody keeps.

The content should match too. If the sign-up promised the availability list, the email leads with the list, not with a story about the owner's holiday.

The first email

Send something the moment a person signs up, while they still remember doing it: what they will get, when the next one arrives, and how to stop.

Better still, include the thing itself: the current list, the latest schedule, a link to the last issue. That proves the promise before anything else can.

It also tests the address. A typo shows up as a bounce now, rather than as silence in three months.

A seasonal list needs one more email: the last of the season, saying when the next will come, so the quiet months are expected rather than puzzling.

Consent and the form

Under CASL, asking for consent means naming your business and how to reach it, saying what the consent is for, and stating that it can be withdrawn at any time.

A specific promise covers the second part far better than a vague one.

A consent box that arrives already ticked is not express consent. Keep a record of the form's wording and of when each person signed up.

The counter-case

A business with genuinely little to say may be better off with no regular newsletter, and a sign-up for one specific thing instead: a reminder when registration opens, a note when the season starts.

A promise that small is still a promise, and still better than subscribe to our newsletter.

Whatever the size of the list, say what arrives, how often and what never will, then keep to it.

Rewriting the form

  1. Put the promise into a single sentence.
  2. Name the frequency or the season.
  3. Add a line on what you will never send.
  4. Put the sending dates in the calendar.
  5. Place the box where the questions get asked.
  6. Send a first email the moment someone signs up.
  7. Change the form whenever the schedule changes.

Step four is what makes the rest honest. A promise written on a quiet Friday is easy; dates in the calendar, each with a name beside it, are what get the third email sent.

Making sure each email arrives intact on office computers is covered in newsletters that fall apart in Outlook.

Frequently asked questions

Why does nobody use my sign-up form?

Usually because it promises nothing. Newsletter describes a format, not a benefit, and people will not hand over an email address without knowing what arrives or how often.

What should the form say?

What subscribers will receive in specific words, how often it arrives, what they will never get, that the address is not shared, and how to stop.

How often should a small business send?

As often as it can sustain in a bad month, stated as a number or a season. Seasonal businesses can promise only the weeks that matter.

Why say what subscribers will not get?

Because people hesitate after being flooded by other lists. A plain line ruling out daily offers or shared addresses answers that fear directly, and few forms bother.

What should the first email contain?

What subscribers will get, when the next email arrives and how to stop, ideally with the promised thing itself, sent the moment someone signs up.

Does CASL affect the sign-up wording?

Yes. Asking for consent means naming the business and how to reach it, saying what you will send and that people can withdraw. Pre-ticked boxes do not qualify.

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.

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