A Subscriber Welcome Snapshot
When I did a little research on email welcome programs I chose to subscribe for the newsletters of four of the biggest camera-makers: Canon, Nikon, Olympus and Pentax. The subscribing experience was quite varied across the board: Olympus sent me a very nice welcome email (shown below) with just about all the information I could wish for:
However, I was unable to subscribe for Nikon or Canon newsletters. Concentrating on the USA websites all I found at Nikon was a subscribe option for Nikon World, a paper magazine appearing four times a year. I would have expected a big brand like Nikon to have a USA newsletter, or if not available from its website a link to a subscribe location.
The same was going on with the Canon USA website: I searched for ‘newsletter’ and all I found were scanners and press releases. Oddly enough when checking the website http://newsletter.canon-europe.com/ for a european newsletter, I found the You Connect competition from Canon…but no option to subscribe to a newsletter. How’s that for subdomain misuse? Finally, when checking http://cpn.canon-europe.com (their pro photography corner) I was able to subscribe:
And this was the welcom message from CPN:
Thank you for subscribing to the CPN newsletter.
You will now receive future issues automatically by e-mail. We look forward to keeping you informed about CPN and CPS activities.CPS Team
A bit more minimalistic than the Olympus one, I think.
All in all I was a bit underwhelmed by how it worked with Nikon and Canon, especially compared to Olympus and Pentax. People want to hear and know from you, so make product and services news available please. I’m sure not everyone takes the time to hunt down newsletter signups like me, so all those lost potential subscribers is a missed chance to keep the people informed.
Takeaway: Make it easy for people to subscribe and welcome them accordingly when they do.
