How to earn the TrustedSite Spam-Free certification and collect more email registrations on your site

Most customers aren’t ready to make a purchase on their very first visit to a new site. Not only will they hop around other sites to see if they can find a better deal, but 90% of consumers will also check 1 or more external sources to make sure that the business is legitimate, according to our recent survey of 600 US-based consumers.

To increase their chances of having new visitors come back to make a purchase, many ecommerce sites aim to capture visitors’ emails on their first visit through forms that offer an incentive like a small discount or free shipping. Sites can then send out regular updates about sales and special offers in hopes of attracting visitors back to the site to complete their purchase.

Unfortunately for ecommerce managers, consumers have become wary of giving out their email to new sites due to an increasing amount of spam and phishing attacks invading their inboxes–over 41% of consumers we surveyed reported concerns about phishing when offered a discount in exchange for their email address, and 58% said they worry about getting spam.

We created the TrustedSite Spam-Free certification to help sites ease these common visitor concerns. When sites earn this certification, they can display the Spam-Free trustmark on their email collection forms. When visitors click the trustmark, they can see a history of recent emails sent by the site so they can get an idea of what’s headed to their inbox if they sign up.

Additionally, TrustedSite monitors emails sent by the site for any signs of spam or suspicious activity. Based on our findings, we give the site a risk score so that visitors can feel more comfortable giving out their email knowing that a third party has deemed the site low risk. It’s one more step towards building visitor trust and increasing sales.

To earn the Spam-Free certification, sites must meet certain requirements. First, sites must sign up for a TrustedSite Pro account. Once that is complete, sites need to enable site monitoring by Inbox Preview and achieve a low risk rating.

Inbox Preview for Chrome is a free browser extension that anyone can install to quickly and easily see if it’s safe to submit their email address on a site. After entering a unique email address on a site, Inbox Preview monitors the emails it receives from that sender. If Inbox Preview does not detect any spam or suspicious activity, it will give the site a low risk rating. Those who install Inbox Preview will know that a site has earned a low risk rating if the extension icon displays a green checkmark when they’re viewing the site.

When users click the extension they will get additional details about the site including how many emails they sent in the past 7 days, how many emails they sent in the past 30 days, the domains and addresses that sent the emails, and the subject lines of recently sent emails.

Sites can show visitors they’ve earned the Spam-Free certification by displaying the Spam-Free trustmark in key areas where concerns about spam and data protection are high. We recommend placing the trustmark on any email collection form underneath the call to action button. We also suggest placing it on account creation pages as 47% of consumers have concerns about spam at this stage in the buyer’s journey.

When visitors click the trustmark, it opens the Inbox Preview modal with the details about the emails sent by the site as we mentioned earlier. If the site is displaying other TrustedSite trustmarks, when visitors click those it will open the site’s certification modal which also shows that the site has earned the Spam-Free certification.

Sites that ease visitor concerns about unwanted emails by displaying the Spam-Free trustmarks have a greater likelihood of growing their email list. And with a larger email list comes more marketing opportunities to get those visitors back on the site and complete their purchases.

Learn how sites can build trust even further with TrustedSite in our Certifications Explained blog series.