Should you ask for a phone number when people subscribe to a newsletter?

More people hand over a phone number than you'd expect. On my local brands the share has ranged from about 15% in my first survey to 40% or 50% of signups once the field sat in a better flow. For the first week or two of one funnel, more than half of new subscribers gave me a number.

The harder question is what you're allowed to do with those numbers. That's why I stopped asking.

How many subscribers give a phone number?

Setup	Phone numbers
My first survey with a phone question (2025)	About 15%
One early survey	About 125 numbers, some of them fake
Optional phone field at the end of my Beehiiv survey	About 20% of survey completers, roughly 10% of all subscribers
A seniors-focused newsletter	About 25%
One list of about 13,000 subscribers	About 1,800 numbers
A regular local newsletter with a post-signup survey	About 30% to 35%
My own survey funnel (2026)	40% to 50%, over 50% in the first week or two

My guess is seniors would give their numbers at an even higher rate in a better flow. I haven't proven that.

Does asking for a phone number hurt signups?

I always assumed it did. Conventional wisdom says any friction on the subscribe page and people just leave, even if the field is optional.

Then I heard a finance newsletter operator at a conference say he A/B tested it hard and found zero difference, so all his forms now ask. He told me he gets about 30% of his revenue from text blasts. That's his audience and his secondhand result, and finance subscribers are more guarded than most. I'd argue local readers are probably less guarded, not more.

My own data is thinner. I hadn't checked my cost per subscriber since adding the field when I first talked about it, so I set up a test: one market kept the optional phone field, the other asked for email only.

Treat it as a trade-off you measure. Say 50% finish your survey without the phone field and 40% finish with it, but 30% of those give a number. Is that worth it? It depends on what the numbers are worth to you.

For a writer-recruitment ad aimed at younger people, I dropped the phone field from the lead form entirely, to cut friction.

Why did I stop collecting phone numbers?

"I was getting about 40% of people's phone numbers. But with the legality of TCPA laws I realized I can't do anything with those phone numbers for now. Cause you'll get sued."

I spent nearly twenty years in insurance, so I know TCPA, the federal law on calls and texts. Once I actually thought about it, I realized I had no plan to text anyone and no compliance setup. Without consent captured the right way, you can't even send the first message asking if someone wants texts. All those numbers were close to worthless.

A peer walked me through what compliance actually requires, and my takeaway was that showing disclosure text on a page isn't enough. You need stored proof of consent for every person:

• The IP address they submitted from
• A timestamp
• The exact form data they submitted

My form didn't track that, so I removed the phone field. I'm building that tracking into my survey tool, but I won't push it until someone wants to pay for it. I'm not a lawyer, and this isn't legal advice. Talk to one before you text anybody.

Where do you even store the numbers?

Check this before you add the field. Beehiiv didn't have a real place for phone numbers when I was collecting them. If your email platform can't store the number with the subscriber, you end up with a spreadsheet nobody uses.

Is SMS worth it for a local newsletter?

I'm not convinced. Everyone in media is saying capture the phone number, but every text costs money and email is free. I don't think SMS is that interesting for local media yet. A B2B newsletter that already has advertisers might be a different story.

Phone numbers are more interesting as a lead asset. If a subscriber says they're buying a home or shopping for insurance, a phone number makes that lead far more valuable to a local partner. That's where I see the upside, once consent, legal review and the capacity to actually call people are handled.

Even then, don't call people the day they subscribe. Let them read the newsletter and like it first. Provide value before you ask for anything.

What should you do Monday?

1. If you collect numbers today, check whether you can prove consent for each one.
2. If you can't, stop collecting until you can, or talk to a lawyer.
3. Check that your email platform can store the number with the subscriber.
4. If you can do both, keep the field optional, put it late in the survey and A/B test it against email only.