Whenever someone subscribers to my blog via email, I log the referring page (the page they signed up on). Today I’ve dissected that data and can’t wait to share it with you! We’re going to figure out which posts (or pages) led to the most email subscribers.
Note that I only started logging this in the last few months, so I don’t have “all time” statistics. Waaa. 😛
The most common pages people subscribed on
- Homepage 60
- How to Choose a Good Blog Name 5
- How to Get Your Review’s Star Ratings in Google Search Results 4
- Tips For New Book Bloggers 3
- Tutorial: How to Set Up Your Blog With MyMail & Amazon SES 3
- If You Love Tweak Me, You’ll ADORE Version 2! 3
- The Best Way to Track RSS & Provide Email Subscriptions on a WordPress Blog 2
- All the WordPress Plugins I Use for Blogging 2
- Review Policy 2
- How to Make Your Background Image Fill the Whole Page 2
- Do You Have a Subscribe via Email Option? 2
- Sitting at Starbucks – Post Your Reviews to Goodreads Automatically 2
- Giveaways 2
And all the others only have 1 signup per page so I haven’t included them.
I find it interesting that the homepage has so many. I assume people read a blog post before they decide to subscribe.. so maybe they read a post, like it, click over to the homepage to check things out more, then sign up via the sidebar there? Let’s bring in Google Analytics to help out.
Tracking visitor behaviour
My most popular post by far is the one on How to Choose a Good Blog Name. So let’s use Google Analytics to dissect that data.
In the last month, that post has gotten 925 sessions. Of those, 40 people have proceeded to click through to another page (what a horribly low percentage, but never mind). Here are the pages they went to:
- 22 went to the homepage
- 2 went to my reviews page
- 6 went to the about page
- 1 went to the post what does a huge book blog look like?
- 9 went to other pages
Then the second interaction shows more and more people going back to the homepage. Of the two that went to reviews, one then went to the homepage after. Of the six that went to about, two went to the homepage after. And so on…
So I guess it makes sense that with the homepage being such a common destination it would yield so many new subscribers.
Next Up: Sidebar opt-in or below posts opt-in?
I have two signup forms on my blog: one in the sidebar and one below each post. Next up, I’m going to figure out which signup form is more popular!
Sadly, I only just started logging which form people use, so I’ll probably wait at least 3-5 months before I show the results. I want to get plenty of data!
I usually go to the home page to fill out the subscription to a blog. I guess I always want to make sure I see all the different options of following a blog so I naturally think it will only be on the home page. This is really interesting information!
I guess I just assume all the follow options would be in the sidebar, which should be on every page. 🙂
So, general question here — is an email subscriber more valuable than say, a bloglovin follower?
I would say so.
RSS followers (which includes Bloglovin since it’s RSS driven) are valuable, but those followers have to check the RSS reader in order to see your updates. That means they have to sit down and think, “I’m now going to look at blog stuff” and then go to the RSS reader website/app.
But an email subscriber will always get your updates as long as they’re checking their email (which most people probably do several times a day). This means they’re much more likely to actually get (and thus read) your updates regularly.
Thanks for that, Ashley. It makes a lot of sense! And if could poke further, since this stuff interests me, do you know how many people click over from your email into your post? For Bloglovin, I do find myself reading everything in the preview and only clicking out to the actual post if I want to comment. Just curious if email is similar — I don’t know how much is included in your mail list.
Here are my statistics from today:
581 emails sent (number of subscribers)
201 opens (includes if one person opened the same email twice)
164 unique opens (the number of separate people who opened, so it DOESN’T count opening the same email multiple times)
23 clicks (counts individual clicks, so if one person clicks 3 times in one email, that counts as 3)
21 unique clicks (the number of clicks when counting only ONE click from each person)
0 unsubscribes
Great post! I love digging into assessment stuff :p I like the idea of the two sign-up locations. Some of the major sites, like Buzzfeed, do that. I second Anne’s question 🙂
I responded to Ann’s question so you can check out my reply above. 🙂
I can’t wait to see which form is getting better signup rate. I love looking at stats like this, especially if you can make it actionable. Even when you can’t make a direct action, it is still interesting to me. I love talking to our data analyst at work.
So far the opt-in below the posts is winning by just a bit (6 vs 4). I’m really interesting to see how this pans out over a longer period of time.
Ooh, I haven’t read some of the posts you listed above and I can’t wait to read them! 🙂 Interesting information, definitely.
I hope you like them. 🙂
Well, I think the homepage being #1 makes sense, right?
I don’t know, I guess it depends. It just seems weird for me because I personally don’t think I ever sign up on the homepage when I subscribe to a blog. I always sign up after reading a post (or two) that I really really like, so then the signup happens on the post itself.
It’s usually the homepage for me too, because once I read a particular review by the person on the blog, I go to their homepage to check out more of their reviews – and then back to the home page to subscribe 🙂 you have a great blog, Ash. I’m jealous, 😛
Thank you! 🙂
I love the sign up option at the bottom of every post? Is that a plug-in, or an Ashley thing?
I don’t think many readers pay attention to side bars that much. I’ve had people comment on my blog asking what I’m reading, or if I have a ‘X’ account when it’s RIGHT THERE on my sidebar!
And when I see a new post I like, I always go to the homepage to snoop around before I decide to do any following…don’t know why.
It’s an Ashley thing, but you can make it work with Tweak Me v2. There’s a “hook” (spot for custom HTML) for below each posts (Appearance » Theme Options » Hooks).
You can read a bit more about it in the docs here: Adding an Opt-In Form
Yeah I don’t look at sidebars AT ALL unless I’m looking for something. I do think there are some things you expect to be in sidebars. Like, if I want to follow you via Twitter or subscribe via email, I will immediately check the sidebar because I expect those things to be there.
But unless I’m looking for something specific like that, I don’t look at the sidebar at all.
The homepage thing makes sense to me too because if I like a post on a blog I didn’t really know about, I go to the homepage to check out other posts and the general “feel” of the blog (and THEN I subscribe). I only have a twitter link below my posts, but I’d love to have an e-mail subscription option as well because I would assume that it gets people to subscribe after reading a post they liked even when they otherwise wouldn’t have thought to. I’m interested in your long term data! But then I can’t seem to get my effing e-mail subscriptions to work (or rather the plugin randomly stopped sending out e-mails even though I didn’t change anything), so I guess it doesn’t matter haha
I think what I find most interesting about this is the content of the posts though. Almost all of them were advice-style posts, which of course completely makes sense. You have a lot of helpful tips on your blog, so people don’t want to miss the next tip that might help them improve their own blog. Fascinating stuff!
That is interesting! I had another look and very, very few people subscribe on review posts. I have 70 different pages logged that people have signed up on (most of which are just 1 person per page). Of those 70, only 6 of those are book reviews.
Neat post! I haven’t thought about tracking that before.
On a related note, I’ve recently become more of an RSS subscriber than anything, and have considered canceling email subscriptions, since I just delete them. If it were for my blog, I wouldn’t notice people cancelling, since I don’t pay attention to stats really. But if you, for example, saw my email subscription cancelled, would you also see that I follow you by RSS?
There’s no way to associate RSS subscriptions with specific people.
So, for example, I can see every single one of my email subscribers by their identifying factor—their email address. I know all the emails that are subscribed to me.
Now, I can see that I have about ~1000 RSS subscribers, but I have no idea who is who since they don’t have an identifying username/email that tells me they’re subscribed.
Does that make sense?
Yep, that’s kind of what I suspected. Thanks!
This is a really interesting question. I can’t say I’m too surprised at the answer though. The home page makes a lot of sense to me. I know I like to go back there just in case so I don’t miss anything. Plus, the home page is one of my favorite places to be so I like to subscribe there where I can see everything.
I think I tend to subscribe by email via the homepage most of the time, probably because I usually visit that first rather than a specific post and if I like what I see I subscribe!
That’s definitely how I do it! I will often find links to articles on other people’s pages (either in a weekly link round up or even in comments sections like yours that list the titles of recent posts). If I’m impressed with the article, I will click over to the home page to read more posts, and that’s when I decide if I want to follow 🙂