Subscription Center: Happy Prospects – Laser Focused Content

Allowing your prospects and customers to control the flow of communication they receive by creating an email preference center has its benefits, including reduced unsubscribes, higher trust, and increased engagement, but there are several things to consider and plan for before pulling the trigger and starting to build out its workflows. Here are some things to mull over before you start.

Audience and List Creation

Start by defining your audience segments and mailing lists. Consider how each audience type may have different interests and role-specific information. The preference center choices you offer your audiences should anticipate those interests in the form of communication options, including type of topics and frequency of communication.

Content Planning

With your audiences in mind, create a content by audience type matrix. This will show you where you have content gaps that need to be filled. You can’t offer a preference for content, and then not have the content to fulfil it. Being able to produce the content to support a preference center is key. Plan to have targeted content for each audience segment.

Setting Goals

Next, create a strategy for optimizing your preference center over time, and identify key performance indicators (KPIs) that provide you with a dashboard for your preference center performance. Here are some KPIs to consider:

  • Period-over-period growth of lists (month-over-month, quarter-over-quarter)
  • Reduction of unsubscribe rate
  • Website content engagement
  • Email engagement performance

If the purpose of your subscription center is to decrease the unsubscribe rate, consider tracking unsubscribe rates across various campaigns or segments. Collecting this initial set of data prior to launching your preference center will help show the impact of your strategy.

Impact can also be demonstrated by tracking the interactions with you content, which should also measure across channels. This could include comparing click-through and page visits by segments.

Nuts-n-Bolts (tech stuff)

Once your preference center strategy is defined and content roadmap is planned, creating a lead flow for your subscription center is next. Stay tuned for part two that will walk through building out a basic subscription center in Marketo.

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