What the what has been going on with subscription numbers in stats?
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I have a suggestion for one and all. Don’t assume new blog readers know how to sign up to subscribe! Since this issue came up (and for a moment I saw the ones who hadn’t followed through) I have changed my wording above the Subscribe button (done in the widgets). I now tell them explicitly that they need to:
enter the e-mail address
click Subscribe and
FOLLOW THROUGH by confirming via the WordPress e-mail that follows.
I believe I lost a large number of potentials because they simply didn’t know the whole process or trust an e-mail from WordPress. (My niche market is largely over age 45).
I know it sounds like overkill but you need to know a lot of the older generation just don’t know how to do it. And there are a lot of older blog newbies who just need a little hand with instructions getting on board. -
npaen, I did this months ago… customized my “sign up” widget to advise readers to expect a confirmation email and check in the spam folder if it doesn’t show up. Yet, when I got the accidental “glimpse” a couple weeks ago of the non-confirmed subscribers, like many others did, there were a significant number of them… half the number of my confirmed subscribers. My subscriber list would be 50% larger if these people completed the confirmation process! I understand the need for “double opt-in,” but there should definitely be some way to remind or nudge these people.
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The thing is that this subscriber sign-up process is fine — even great — for the kind of people reading and writing to this forum. The trouble comes in the niche markets, where a preponderance of readers may be considerably less computer-literate. They don’t really read or understand the instructions. Some of them don’t even really regularly check their emails — and yet they’ll complain that they didn’t get the message. For my church choir members blog, I had to give up expecting people to click a link in the confirmation email. Instead I subscribe a single email address, then convert that to a forwarding address forwarding to my list of members, and which I manage myself manually.
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I would love to know if what npaen suggests is possible – if we can get the list of unconfirmed subscribers back again so we can send them another friendly reminder email. It may help mine (and others) subscription numbers significantly!
Please?
Henry :)
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Since my above posting, I’ve discovered that it is no longer possible to remove even email subscribers from our blogs. So I’m bringing this back up as a further request to allow blog owners the ability to remove unwanted subscribers, regardless of whether they are email or WordPress.com subscribers.
This ability to remove a subscriber was available across the board before the change in subscriber stats.
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@justjennifer: Yeah, they removed the feature recently for email subscribers too:
https://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/can-we-approvedisapprove-subscribers?replies=10#post-552773 -
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Markel, my Happiness Engineer,
I recently set up a new blog. I had someone tell me today that they subscribed, but it is not showing up in the stats which tells me he may have missed the confirmation email? My mom subscribed last week (great fan base I have :) ) and her confirmation email went to her junk folder. She hasn’t really done anything with wordpress before, so has not specifically blocked the address.Any advice for what I can do to make sure that people who think they ARE signed up, really become signed up?
Thanks
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