Email Subscription: Forms versus Links

First of all, if you are not offering email subscriptions on your blog, you should. It is incredibly easy to setup a RSS to email service through Feedburner, and this option will increase your audience with the folks that are not familiar with RSS (believe it or not this represents the majority of the Internet users).

The ratio of email subscribers to total subscribers (email + RSS) will vary depending on your niche. It can be as low as 3% and as high as 30%. Daily Blog Tips has a relatively tech-savvy audience (bloggers), and that explains why out of 5000 subscribers only 200 (4%) people are using the email service. My other blog, Daily Writing Tips, has a more diversified readership, and out of 2400 total subscribers 360 (15%) are subscribing via email.

Regardless of your niche, therefore, I think that email subscriptions are worth it. The numbers will be small on the beginning, but suppose your blog grows to reach 10,000 RSS subscribers, it would be nice to have 1,000 extra readers via email, wouldn’t it?

Now that you are convinced about offering email subscriptions we can enter into the central topic of this article. There are basically two ways to offer email subscriptions on your site: with a subscription form and with a subscription link. Which one is better? We are going to analyze each method individually, and then draw some conclusions.

Email Subscription Forms

You can see live examples of email subscription forms on Copyblogger and Problogger. Basically there is an input form where the user needs to type its email address and click on “Subscribe.” He will then see the following popup window (for the sake of simplicity we will carry the analysis using the Feedburner service only):

On this popup the user will need to pass a CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart) filter writing down some letters. Finally, an email will be sent to the user email address containing a link which is used to activate the subscription.

Summary of the steps required for subscription:

1. Type email address
2. Click on the link
3. Type CAPTCHA letters
4. Click to complete subscription
5. Open email
6. Click on activation link

Email Subscription Links

You can see live examples of email subscription links on this blog and on FreelanceSwitch. With this method the user will need to click directly on the link, and as a result he will be redirected to a new page that looks like this:

On this page the user will need to type his email address and to pass the CAPTCHA filter by writing down some letters. Once again an email will be sent to the specified address containing a link that will be used for the activation of the subscription.

Summary of the steps required for subscription:

1. Click on the link
2. Type email address
3. Type CAPTCHA letters
4. Click to complete subscription
5. Open email
6. Click on activation link

Conclusions

As you can see, the number of steps required to subscribe with each method is the same. Fixing all other variables (e.g., placement, appeal of the blog, etc.) the chances of someone subscribing via email, therefore, should be similar with both methods.

In my opinion, however, the subscription form has some drawbacks. First of all it uses a lot of space. Precious space if we consider the monetization aspect. Take a look at the Problogger site, for instance. Should Darren decide to remove his email subscriber box and substitute it with an email subscription link below the RSS link, the whole “Sponsors” section would be lifted significantly, putting two more sponsor blocks above the fold (above the fold equals more money when you talk with advertisers).

Secondly, subscription forms might create confusion with search boxes.

These arguments do not apply to all blogs, obviously. If the style and positioning are right, subscription forms can be effective (Copyblogger is a good example). Some people also defend that forms are more eye catching.

What do you think? Forms or links are more effective for offering email subscriptions?