I subscribe to the IAB SmartBrief email newsletter for top daily interactive marketing headlines. They’ve recently been trying to get me to update my profile by sending me to a profile update page when I click on a given story in the newsletter and before sending me on to the actual story.
The trick to building your email newsletter subscriber list is, of course, to make it as easy as possible to subscribe. That means requiring the least amount of information to join, preferably just an email address. But that means that if you want to get the demographics of your list, you need to collect that data after people have signed up.
IAB’s tactic is clever if a bit annoying. <GRIN>Call it nag marketing</GRIN>. Here’s a screenshot of the profile update page:
