17 ms·

I don’t want to sign up for your newsletter (2018)

• BigCryo 4y ago
  Well you're going to get it anyway
• thathndude 4y ago
  Can't upvote this submission, and the spirit of the post, enough. These drive me absolutely crazy. The decentralized news/opinion revolution is probably a net positive. But this, specific, behavior related to it, drives me nuts.
  • hestefisk 4y ago
    Agree. Who ever invented it deserves to have their mouth washed with brown soap.
    • politelemon 4y ago
      Is brown soap an expression or euphemism for poop?
      • qwery 4y ago
        Having your mouth washed out with soap is a "traditional" punishment, usually inflicted on those that have committed a mouth-related offence like swearing (if you can believe it) or smoking. It's now mostly a figure a speech. The brown soap is a less desirable bar of soap to have forcibly inserted into your mouth.
        • PcChip 4y ago
          I think their question was why is it less desirable
          • arbitrage 4y ago
            Allegorically it's a cheap bar of soap that tastes worse than a more expensive bar of soap that is dyed to not be an ugly colour.
            • Symbiote 4y ago
              I think it's soap with extra lye. It's more for cleaning floors than bodies. https://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brun_s%C3%A6be https://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brun_s%C3%A6be
            • svachalek 4y ago
              "I told you not to use the Lifebuoy!"
      • Symbiote 4y ago
        I think it might be a Danish expression. Brown soap is a strong soap containing lye, more likely sold near the things for cleaning floors and surfaces than your body. https://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brun_s%C3%A6be https://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brun_s%C3%A6be
• drcongo 4y ago
  Many years ago I made TabClosedDidntRead.com - a collection of invasive overlays - to highlight this trend when it first started (and wrote it up [0] though much of that probably doesn't stand up so well now). I had to stop collecting them after a few months as it became most sites rather than some sites, and things have only gotten much worse since. It looks like TC;DR is no longer up, presumably I just lost hope at some point. [0] https://andybeaumont.com/post/the-value-of-content/ https://andybeaumont.com/post/the-value-of-content/ Edit: It seems the Tumblr is still up, just not with the custom domain - https://tcdr.tumblr.com https://tcdr.tumblr.com
  • kermi 4y ago
    Ironically with a "We use cookies!" overlay making me instantly closing the tab
    • jhoelzel 4y ago
      it shouldn't. It is your opportunity to actively decline the tracking of the website. And if you actually do click the settings tab on some of them, you will see just how many trackers clickbait sites integrate and that will give you at least a choice to opt out. The GDPR laws im europe are part of the healing process of the internet, therefore not at all compareable with the "please subscribe to my newsletter" popups.
      • timw4mail 4y ago
        Doesn't make them less annoying though.
      • cubefox 4y ago
        Interesting take.
      • johannes1234321 4y ago
        The publisher also could avoid tracking cookies.
      • MereInterest 4y ago
• theshrike79 4y ago
  There is exactly zero percent chance that I will subscribe to any newsletter when I haven't read even the first article on your site fully. Maybe if I see myself coming back to the site for insightful stuff, then I might consider a newsletter - but even that I'll subscribe to using my RSS reader (NewsBlur).
  • neilalexander 4y ago
    There's a zero percent chance I will subscribe to a newsletter willingly even if I love your articles. I try very hard to keep the signal-to-noise ratio of my inbox tuned because otherwise important things get lost in the deluge. I don't want your articles pushed to me on your timeframe, I want to consume them in my own time and for that an RSS reader is perfectly adequate.
    • eviks 4y ago
      That's an easy issue to fix: just move all these subscriptions to a separate mail tag/folder (skipping inbox), and read them whenever you like
    • Taywee 4y ago
      There's a sizeable portion of the population for whom RSS would be perfect, but they don't know it exists, and if you tried to get them into it, would be baffled by the complete lack of interface (remember when Firefox would show an RSS icon near the URL when a site had an RSS link in the header?) A newsletter is useless to you, but a lot of people like them. I agree that popups aren't the way to push it, though. A simple newsletter link in the header of the site is more than good enough. I don't care how good the "conversion" rate is, I don't like harassing people who are just visiting my site for the first time.
      • hoseja 4y ago
        RSS feels intentionally sabotaged.
    • Semaphor 4y ago
• jhoelzel 4y ago
  Don't worry, as the tech illiterate slowly leave the internet i bet the time of annoyment is finally comming to an end.
  • ianai 4y ago
    Whoa, news to me. What is indicating the tech illiterate are leaving?!
    • jhoelzel 4y ago
      The problem will solve itself eventually. Now that the elderly are leaving the internet, the chance of finding somebody who randomly follows instructions will make this malware trend vanish imho /e: apparently this is more true for Europe than it is for other locations. I mean come on, its two clicks more which you usually do once for a website. And we also had every news station explain to you why the GDPR is a good thing and a big deal.
      • nicbou 4y ago
        Watch people under 30 use computers. They are just as likely to have a million newsletter subscriptions, and to click whatever makes the cookie banner disappear. HN is not a representative sample of the current generation.
      • ianai 4y ago
        I stopped expecting a demographic change as the boomers age when I looked at the demographics of gen Z and younger. The population “drop” doesn’t look so significant. Meanwhile intelligence/knowledge will always be a rarer feature in the population. There’s just more to do in a day and no one picks the same hobbies.
  • FredPret 4y ago
    Leaving the internet? You mean joining in huge numbers? According to this (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_Internet_users https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of...) only 63% of us are online. Prepare for a lot more tech illiterates joining over the next two or three generations.
• VinzO 4y ago
  Ironically, the trend of having page design with low contrast text as in this article is almost as annoying as the newsletter stuff.
  • dreamcompiler 4y ago
    It also seems to be full of nbsp characters*, which create random extra space between some words. * I'm not certain because I'm on mobile now and cannot easily check the source.
    • egypturnash 4y ago
      I just checked the source and it's not that. It's not a bad decision with regards to text justification as far as I can see, either. Might just be some broken kerning in the font it's serving up, this page is a dense thicket of machine-generated markup and I really do not want to investigate any further: <p id="viewer-9ptf9" class="mm8Nw _1j-51 WkT0MK _1FoOD _3M0Fe T3Ond1 WkT0MK public-DraftStyleDefault-block-depth0 fixed-tab-size public-DraftStyleDefault-text-ltr"> <span class="_2PHJq public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr"> <span>When a user moves their mouse from the middle of the page toward the navigation bar — presumably to abandon the page — there are technologies which can track this behavior and trigger a “mouse-out” alert. While this UX element (from companies such as Crazy Egg and Rooster) has great potential, I’ve found it far too common that websites use this to overlay huge pop-ups across the entire screen as a last-ditch effort to convert users.</span> </span> </p> what is this garbage, why does a paragraph need its text inside a span inside another span, what generated this trash? <meta name="generator" content="Wix.com Website Builder"/> ah, gotcha
      • apocalyptic0n3 4y ago
        You'll see that type of output from most WYSYWIG editors. Some are better than others and they've improved over time, but a lot are still garbage. Both Redactor and TinyMCE would have produced something like this at points in the past (been a while since I used them, so that may not be the case now). Pasting from MS Word will also produce some gnarly HTML in most editors.
• nicbou 4y ago
  I asked why newsletters are pushed so heavily: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32304011 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32304011 The main reason is that it's the only traffic that you own. It's not at the mercy of someone else's algorithm. There are more answers in the thread I linked.
  • ffpip 4y ago
    > The main reason is that it's the only traffic that you own. It's not at the mercy of someone else's algorithm. You are at the mercy of Gmail/Outlook's spam filtering algorithms
    • quickthrower2 4y ago
      Not really, not if you pay your protection money to one of the email sending services.
    • arvidkahl 4y ago
      This becomes a question of orders of magnitude. On Twitter/Instagram/whatever, you're exposed to the arbitrary censorship choices of the platform AND the risk of being deplatformed for any reason. Once that happens, you don't just lose deliverability, you lose every single relationship you had. With an email list, at least you retain the list should your deliverability tank. It might take a lot of work to migrate to a new non-deny-listed setup, but at least you have a (hopefully double-)opted-in relationship with each prior reader still.
    • ghaff 4y ago
      A lot of fairly low quality (but at least semi-legit) newsletters that I probably didn't explicitly sign up for end up in my Gmail SPAM folder--probably because enough people have flagged them as SPAM. But I actually find it pretty uncommon for a newsletter I directly signed up for to end up there.
      • sharemywin 4y ago
        especially if you mark it not spam when you sign up
• ricardo81 4y ago
  I often wonder how many human hours/days/weeks/years are lost on these cookie & newsletter modals. Too many. There should be some sort of standardised comms with the browser to say what the browser would accept, probably via HTTP headers in case JS is disabled - and then the site can deal with this if they take exception to the browser's defaults.
  • timeon 4y ago
    While I agree with you I must admit that it sometimes even save my time. When cookie/newsletter pop-up shows it breaks my procrastination habit. I ask my self in that moment if I really need to see that content. In most cases answer is no. So instead of closing the modal I just close whole tab.
  • _dain_ 4y ago
    It would end up like the do-not-track header -- brazenly ignored.
• davidgerard 4y ago
  One day Google will start penalising lightboxes, and you'll be able to hear the anguished screams from space.
• CPLX 4y ago
  What I don’t understand is why you can’t just put a nice big (or small) square or element or CTA on the page prominently that asks people to sign up for the newsletter. Like, it’s fine, go ahead, ask me. Make it obtrusive. Hell you can make it blink. But why can’t I look at it and just scroll by it. Just like put it on the fucking page it’s not hard.
  • cubefox 4y ago
    I think they actually did that in the past. Apparently it didn't work as well.
  • UncleEntity 4y ago
    Preferably at the end of the article because if you’ve made it that far… Unfortunately I’d never see it because I almost always clicked off the site if reader mode doesn’t work unless it’s something I’m really interested in. Can almost watch the battery drain with all the auto-play videos and animated ads they pack into websites these days.
    • ninkendo 4y ago
      Yup, reader mode is the only way the web is tolerable any more. It’s truly sad.
  • aembleton 4y ago
    > Hell you can make it blink. No thanks
• skilled 4y ago
  The crazy thing about this whole newsletter and popup thing in general is that, why in the hell would I give out my email address or anything else 1 second after entering a website? How and where exactly is the connection there that makes sense? I actually sent a strongly worded email to MIT Tech Review yesterday (there was an article on the front page) because they have 3 separate popups on first-entry to the site. Like, wtf? Have you not heard of timed popups (such as those that trigger past a certain element), or popups that don't make you want to immediately close the site? It's so pathetic and such a 2005 trend, it's hard to believe people still do it in the most annoying way possible.
  • sourcecodeplz 4y ago
    They do it because it works. Many people on the internet are not tech savvy and they just assume that in order to view the content they must input their email. It doesn't help that the close button is sometimes barely visible.
    • criddell 4y ago
      I would think the MIT Tech Review readers wouldn’t be total tech noobs…
      • gumballindie 4y ago
        In this case MIT TR product managers are.
    • CM30 4y ago
      What's the conversion rate though? How many of those people continue to read the emails sent out by said site? Feels like you'd get a lot of dead subscribers and opt outs (and spam reports), not an active community or follower base.
      • jabroni_salad 4y ago
        If it is higher than zero somebody somewhere can justify it.
• lloydatkinson 4y ago
  No, I don't want to read your thinner-than-hair-almost white-on-white text.
  • huhtenberg 4y ago
    Yup, this is ridiculous - https://i.ibb.co/P58w9WT/Image7.png https://i.ibb.co/P58w9WT/Image7.png
• poopsmithe 4y ago
  modal popups * obscure everything behind it * distract the viewer * require dismissal to proceed I think modal popups for any reason is bad. It's always better to use a new page which can be deep linked and avoided if it contains content irrelevant to the viewer's interests.
• shmde 4y ago
  The only "good" newsletter popup modal is on Josh Comeau's websites.
• masswerk 4y ago
  I guess, there's still a use case for modal pop-ups, since they provide an ideal break point for considering, whether the piece in question is worthwhile your time or not. So, you may simply leave instead of bothering to operate the button… In UX terms, there may be room for improvement with the wording, like, "Are you sure you want to read this till the end?" ;-)
• avgcorrection 4y ago
  2018.
  • Tepix 4y ago
    It has only gotten worse.
• datadeft 4y ago
  It would be great if there was a website like HN where I can go and it has all the news from the companies I am interested in and based on my subscription it would also recommend what else to be aware of. HN fulfils this role for now.
  • cvwright 4y ago
    It would be cool if there was a “syndication” format for sites to post summaries of all their new content, so then you could have a reader on the client side to collate the news feed of the day. This syndication format would need to be really simple though. :)
• simonsarris 4y ago
  If you use Substack and don't like this behavior you can turn it off, go to settings and look for "Subscribe prompts on post pages" and uncheck it. I love Substack but think this feature is ill-considered. I am sure it converts by the numbers, but I want 100% of my readers to have a pristine experience reading, foremost.
  • ryanblakeley 4y ago
    I was hoping this would turn off the full page modal people see when they land on a post, but I already had it switched off, so I guess not.
  • grishka 4y ago
    These things are the reason I have JS off for Substack.
• ale42 4y ago
  Never seen such popups... but that's probably because I close tabs using Ctrl+W...
• ajsnigrutin 4y ago
  I just put in somerandomname@<the_article_domain.tld> in the field. Or admin@, info@, postmaster@, or something like that. Hopefully it remembers "me" and doesn't bother me again.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • Nextgrid 4y ago
    I wonder if a browser plugin could be made to do this automatically. Not just hide the popup, but spam it with fake info in the background.
• walthamstow 4y ago
  Hey, as long as e-commerce stores keep giving me 10% off my first order, which I was going to place anyway, then I'll keep subscribing (and then unsubscribing) from their shitty newsletter.
• figassis 4y ago
  Is it a good idea to build an newsletter subscription service (like mailchimp) that works like apple email relay, where the customers don't have access to the actual emails? The difference would be on trust that the provider will not use the emails for it's own purposes other than what the newsletter owner agreed too in a contractually binding manner that survives acquisitions. Now the newsletter owns the relationship, and the readers are assured that they're not handing over their email and can easily unsubscribe.
  • iso1631 4y ago
    As the viewer if I wanted to sign up to your email then I'd be using a unique email address (like icloud I guess) which I could simply block when you inevitably leak my personal data
    • figassis 4y ago
      Still is there value? whether you submit a unique email address, this model would still work for the millions of users who do not correct? Also, I assume icloud or similar services are not immune to leaks?
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
• barbs 4y ago
  About time I saw an article about this on HN. Honestly one of the worst design patterns since the original popups. I can't believe it works, but it obviously must do, otherwise it wouldn't be so prevalent. Is there a plugin of sorts that turns these off?
  • rchaud 4y ago
    NoScript
• dreamcompiler 4y ago
  This happens in brick-and-mortar too. It has become difficult to buy something in person without being asked to sign up for a frequent shopper program -- sometimes very forcefully. Apparently retailers despise the fact that some customers prefer to buy things anonymously without being spammed or having their privacy invaded. I predict B&M stores will soon begin to block you at the front door until you give them your email address.
  • yawnr 4y ago
    I literally couldn’t buy something the other day without giving an email because “oh we’re paperless!” Was the response I got when I asked for a paper receipt instead. Of course, 10 seconds later I got a “welcome to the family!” email. Should be illegal.
    • marcosdumay 4y ago
      > Should be illegal. Hum... Isn't that one of the main goals of the GDPR?
  • jonathanlydall 4y ago
    A few brick and mortar store retailers around South Africa have started asking "May/can I have your cellphone number?" when I'm making a purchase to which I respond with either "You don't need that." or simply "Nope.". When asked why, conversation typically goes like: Me: "I don't want my phone being sent SMSes or phone calls from your company or anyone they would share my number with." Them: "Oh, don't worry, that won't happen from us." Me: "Well it absolutely won't happen if you don't have my number.".
    • AnimalMuppet 4y ago
      "No" is a complete sentence. You don't have to justify it, especially to someone who may be paid to not see the reasonableness of your logic.
      • jonathanlydall 4y ago
• m-p-3 4y ago
  Personally if I want a "newsletter" I'll look for an RSS feed to depolute my email inbox. Sadly they're not really fashionable there days :( At least I can subscribe and unsubscribe at my convenience without requiring the sender to take any actions (removing from mailing list).
  • datavirtue 4y ago
    Yeah, this is odd. Getting added to someone's RSS feed sounds like a marketing wet dream.
    • marcosdumay 4y ago
      I gave up on RSS a long time ago. It's ironic how people think it's great to send full articles through email, but only want to push short (some times even misleading) summaries through RSS. Yes, RSS should be even better than email for the marketing people.
• Vaslo 4y ago
  Reminds me of the days of going to radio shack and their insistence on having your name and zip code. One professor of mine recommended providing a particular zip code in Alaska with a name that was ridiculous or even vulgar. If your marketing teams want my info, they’ll need to pay for it.
• mp3geek 4y ago
  Subscrive to Fanboy Annoyances in brave://adblock or in uBO. No more newsletter popups :)
• meerita 4y ago
  It's been years I don't read emails that aren't job specific or have more than 10 lines of text. In fact, the email communication within my job is all reduced to notifications more than work, everything is handled on Slack.
• louwhopley 4y ago
  Out of interest, what are the typical conversion rates people see on this? What % of users actually sign up?
• mmvora 4y ago
  The best part is after when the site tells you to "Enter your email" to Unsubscribe
  • nsxwolf 4y ago
    Or when you think you've unsubscribed, multiple times, only to see there's a "Preferences" link on their unsubscribe page, where you find out you've unsubscribed from 3 of the 48 categories of newsletters they send.
• cabirum 4y ago
  Everyone does it because everyone else does it. And since everyone does it, it does not hurt metrics. And seems like noone had the guts to be the first to stop this nonsense. (also applies to layoffs?)
  • datavirtue 4y ago
    Plenty of companies happily avoid layoffs...just not newsworthy.
• boplicity 4y ago
  All of these complaints boil down to people wanting something for free, without any inconvenience at all, even something as minor as clicking an extra button. Unfortunately, most websites require an actual business model to consistently produce content. Business models usually need a form of lead gathering, or audience building. (Which is, frankly, core to most businesses.) If you don't want to engage with businesses, then there are still endless hobby websites out there that do little other than produce content for free, without any popups, ads, upsells, etc.
  • b3lvedere 4y ago
    I will consume (information) how i see fit. Not how other people/companies think i should consume. If they have a problem with that, it is totally in their legal right to try and do something about it. Just as it is still totally in my legal right to consume (information) how i see fit. This may or may not involve legal workarounds. I do not care if their business/earning model is not compatible with my method of consuming (information).
  • wffurr 4y ago
    Why not let me read first and then prompt? "Want more like this? Enter your email to subscribe." You could probably get much higher conversion and lower unsubscribe rates by only going after readers who stuck around a bit.
  • asgerhb 4y ago
    This is only applicable if these businesses spend $0 on SEO. If they want to clog up the top results, then I reserve the right to complain about them.
    • boplicity 4y ago
      Google could very easily populate search results with mainly non-commercial websites. However, they are very strongly incentivized to support commercial websites; I believe this explains why they don't generally penalize popups and similar things.
  • 4y ago
• Tepix 4y ago
  The web has become quite unusable over the years with all the popups. Perhaps we need a browser that uses AI to block all the annoying page elements? Or we use crowd intelligence to achieve the task. If enough users flag the page elements that popup, and this data is shared, many could profit from a better experience.
  • asgerhb 4y ago
    Some ad-blockers already provide optional block-rules for "annoyance" elements. Unfortunately, they are less well supported. I used them for a while with AdNauseam until it ate some important UI element or other.
• izzydata 4y ago
  Just a few days ago I was reading an article from some tech site complaining about ads in Windows and the first thing upon opening the side is a popup ad for a newsletter. Do they not see the irony there or is the whole industry on autopilot? https://i.imgur.com/KOU98Bw.png https://i.imgur.com/KOU98Bw.png
• hoseja 4y ago
  Ctrl+W is a great shortcut, I have it mapped on the extra button on my mouse, along with Ctrl+Tab and F5
• kylecordes 4y ago
  I assume there are some conversion-optimization experts who think and consult data to choose the ideal timing and frequency to invite a visitor to sign up. I.e. the moment they are most likely to do so if invited. ... and the other 95% of folks who just grab an off-the-shelf email-list-invite popover widget and slap it on a web site.
• asgerhb 4y ago
  This stuff has forced me to read every article in Firefox' reader mode. I am forced to tolerate missing figures and bongled formatting (from bad internal markup) because I cannot read an article if at any moment I might be hit with a newsletter-jumpscare.
• sharemywin 4y ago
  I think the whole theme of this article and thread is don't waste your time trying to sell to developers. they block your ads, don't buy your stuff, won't even sign up for your free newsletter to see if you add any value there. generally don't even believe in advertising and marketing. Most of them would rather build instead of buy, which is useful as a developer, but not great to form a business around. The exception is Free Tiers so they can convince they're bosses to use your enterprise tier.
• pcorsaro 4y ago
  There are some sites that I am actually signed up for their newsletter, I'll click a link in the newsletter to read the article on the site, and then I still get a popup on the site to signup for the newsletter. Most newsletter links have referral URL parameters. I don't know why they can't detect that I came from a newsletter click and just not show me the popup. I understand it could be "abused" or if the link was forwarded from someone you might want to try and capture new subscribers, but I feel like that's a small enough percentage that it would be better to make the experience less annoying for your regulars.
• DeusExMachina 4y ago
  Despite this topic being brought up regularly, these pop-up forms do work. That's why everyone uses them. Disclaimer: I use them and so do many of my competitors. "Does a poor job of increasing conversions" is the opinion of someone that has never looked at the data. You can be sure that the people interested in conversions run analytics and A/B testing on everything. If these pop-ups did a poor job and there was a better alternative, you can be sure that everyone would have already migrated to that alternative. The "rule of seven" can also be used to counter her argument. That is precisely why businesses try to get the email of visitors: to have more interactions. Otherwise, for the vast majority of visitors, the first visit would be the only interaction they will ever have. "Works against user goals" might be true for short term goals like jumping through the most amount of content. However, users have different goals and short-term ones are often not the best goals. A pop-up might address other long-term goals the visitor cares more about than going to yet another web page. But more than anything, these pop-ups serve business goals because most of these websites exist only thanks to their revenue. Without them my business would probably not be viable. I assume that many accept the small annoyance of a pop-up as the cost of keeping the websites they like running. And if the pop-up appears when the user is about to close the window, it does not even stop a visitor in his tracks. He can still close the window without any extra click.
  • qwertox 4y ago
    Do you know the ratio of your annoyed vs. subscribed-via-that-popup users? I get terribly annoyed by them and always wonder why they don't just add a section to the page where one can easily subscribe, if one seems it to be a worthy thing to do? Edit: Also, I want to add, that sometimes I leave the page immediately because such a popup pops up. The cookie banners are annoying enough.
    • PragmaticPulp 4y ago
      Measuring a conversion increase means that there was a net positive. I know it’s not a popular opinion on HN, but losing some annoyed users is an acceptable trade off if the net result is an increase in conversions. The truth is that visitors who are so easily annoyed that a simple pop-up will cause them to leave the site weren’t very interested to begin with. If you gain 10 subscribers for every 1 annoyed visitor, it’s still a big net win. Most visitors aren’t as sensitive to annoyances as a lot of the people in these comments.
• indymike 4y ago
  One of the hardest problems in marketing is making the uninteresting interesting. So instead of solving the hard problem (being interesting), a lot of marketers focus on tactical stuff like increasing subscribes to the newsletter.
• a_lesanka 4y ago
  could you please give an example of "light design patterns" in such case? I've caught the thought: there are no magic bullets. And still.. what can at least softly help me to increase newsletter conversions?
• vermooten 4y ago
  Hard-to-read grey fine type also acts against user goals. Is it still 2010?
• coding123 4y ago
  Google should just delist sites that violate spammy shit.
• naruhodo 4y ago
  Speaking of horrible web design, care to add a bit of contrast to your grey text on off-white page?
• idopmstuff 4y ago
  "If “the rule of seven” — that a customer needs to interact seven times before buying — is marketing 101, why does the site demand a newsletter conversion before a new user has even finished reading one article?" This seems to really misunderstand things - if the customer has hit your website because they came to one of your SEO-optimized blog articles, there is a very solid chance they're not going to stumble upon your site again. The point of the newsletter conversion is to give you a chance to get those seven interactions.
  • datavirtue 4y ago
    So the web is just a fancy email funnel?
    • idopmstuff 4y ago
      Well the email directs you back to the web, so I think for accuracy's sake you'd have to just describe it as a sales funnel.
• rchaud 4y ago
  > If “the rule of seven” — that a customer needs to interact seven times before buying — is marketing 101, why does the site demand a newsletter conversion before a new user has even finished reading one article? This has happened because Google, Facebook, Youtube and other walled gardens have locked up the online audience. If you clicked on a site, chances are you discovering it via one of the above. And chances are, you'll never see that site again if you close the tab. So that's the 'rule of 7' out the window right there. If the popup converts even one person, that's better than it not being there at all. "Yeah, but it's so annoying, I'll never subscribe via these tactics!" Congratulations, you are part of the rare few that know how the sausage is made. You probably also know that these modals aren't there for UX designers to praise or Substack to quake in their boots. They're there to convert.
  • Veen 4y ago
    I wonder if the people who implement this stuff consciously balance "it works" with "this is shitty" and feel a twinge of guilt when they do it. Or are they just scumbags who don't know the difference between effective and good?
    • rchaud 4y ago
      I doubt it. These tools have paying customers. At least, I doubt if they care any more than the people that work on pre-roll ads on Youtube, or Sponsored posts on Instagram.
• punnerud 4y ago
  I have a list of newsletters it’s almost impossible to disable. Every time I find a new one, I sign them up for each other. Most of them is the type: “No, I did not sign up for this”
• egypturnash 4y ago
  I wonder how many of these popups result in newsletter subscriptions that quickly get marked as spam because nobody remembers subscribing to them and hitting the spam button is easier than finding the tiny unsubscribe link in the footer that may not actually do anything. Also, calling for an extra-light font with pale grey type is super illegible, damn.
• synergy20 4y ago
  I subscribed to about 10 weekly newsletters and I love them. it's the pop-up "subscribe me now", along with the cookie prompts really made surfing experience miserable. just leave a subscription button somewhere on the page, if I like it I can opt in to subscribe, do not push me with your pop-up please.
• DamnInteresting 4y ago
  So many replies here that are essentially "I hate them too, but I use them because they work"--i.e., "I am a hypocrite because capitalism."
• javier123454321 4y ago
  We went from new page popups to these modal popups. Web has come a long way in 20 years.
• Decabytes 4y ago
  As someone who runs a news letter take my opinion with a grain of salt. The reality is that the marketing tricks work. The stupid thumbnails, the pop up windows, and the call to actions. They have been demonstrated over and over again to increase growth. It sucks that it's the case, but the internet is not the same internet of 15-20 years ago. We are in the attention economy now, and since most users expect things to be free, we have to worry about things like tops of funnels, SEO, evergreen content, and virality. The things that people have to say and do to stand above the crowd are ridiculous. And it's not just newsletters, look at the guy who made the AI Drake/Weeknd song, look at Andy Kelly's post^1 Why I'm donating $150/month (10% of my income) to the musl libc project, look at all the current advice for how to become a new published author. How you market plays a huge role in your success, and merit alone won't cut it unless your program or content is just that good. I write my newsletter because I'm excited to contribute to a space that has provided so much for me, both financially and intellectually. I'm eternally grateful for the opportunities tech has given me and every post I make is sharing that gratitude. But I also want my posts to be heard by more than just myself, so I've got to market it, even if I'm getting no financial gain from the newsletter. The tools and techniques people will choose to employ to get seen and heard vary, and each content creator must decided where they draw the line. Maybe it's my ego that demands I have more than a dozen eyeballs viewing my posts every week, or a corruption in my soul from decades of internet consumption. But I genuinely believe in the content I post, and I want to find the largest community of people who will enjoy it too. 1. https://andrewkelley.me/post/why-donating-to-musl-libc-project.html https://andrewkelley.me/post/why-donating-to-musl-libc-proje...
• vpaulus 4y ago
  [flagged]
• hn8305823 4y ago
  > Does a poor job of increasing conversions You say that but there is some asshole driving around in a Porsche 911 because it works. Why else would they do it?
• 93po 4y ago
  I recommend enabling the annoyances filters on uBlock Origin. It removes most of this bs
• muyuu 4y ago
  install-my-app nagboxes are typically worse and more persistent
• fwungy 4y ago
  I hired a small business web consultant. His big advice was to build content with the intent of getting email addresses. The email address is the gateway to the real sales avenue. Everyone uses this pattern. You see it everywhere.
• lamontcg 4y ago
  Is there a firefox extension to just suppress sending mouse-out events?
• NoZebra120vClip 4y ago
  The funniest thing happened once in my clinic. I was in a support group and our leader was pushing this concept of "Amor Fati". In service of that, she YouTubed us a video from a channel called "The Daily Stoic" and somewhere near the end, the host mentioned that they have a newsletter and you could subscribe for the aforementioned daily bits. One of the other group members perked up and expressed great interest in finding out how she could subscribe to said newsletter. It was going to be a challenge, but I wonder if she managed to find out how and do so. So there are people out there who, moths to a flame, will be magnetically drawn to your newsletter come-ons, and that's exactly why we have a million annoying popups, because it's a numbers game, and even 1% counts in large amounts.