Website Subscriptions

Offering website subscriptions allows visitors to sign up to receive notifications when new content is published on topics they are interested in — this chapter covers how to set them up.

Subscription options

The first step is to decide which subscription options to offer. Fortunately, the category list for website content can also form the set of options.

Each of the firm’s products and strategies can be added as additional subscription options, but this might become unwieldy — especially for a large product range or one that includes UCITS funds (subscriptions can only be offered to visitors in countries where a fund is registered).

If the subscription options have been based on asset classes that align with the firm's product range (as recommended), website visitors can be given a simpler choice for product and strategy subscriptions:

In this case:

• Asset classes are used for blog subscriptions (non-product content)
• Product and strategy content is distributed to subscribers who have opted in to general product/strategy updates and a relevant asset class
• Product content is also restricted to subscribers in countries where the product is registered

Adding a subscription form

Next, a form needs to be added to the website (only made available to professional investors) so visitors can subscribe. The form will comprise two sections: (1) personal details and (2) subscription choices.

Personal details

I would recommend including the following fields in the personal details section:

• First name and surname (free text)
• Email address (free text)
• Country (dropdown)
• Client group (dropdown)
• Job function (dropdown)

Note that job function and client group are used to manage new subscribers and are only needed if the volume of new subscribers is so high that the process requires automation – otherwise, each new subscriber can be vetted manually.