You have a blog, you’ve been writing your contents and now you want to turn one-time visitors into subscribers (and you are smart enough to use an email marketing service like AWeber or GetResponse). So how do you boost the opt-in rate with regards to the opt-in form?
Anatomy Of An Opt-in Form
Let’s take a look at what an opt-in form usually contains and how it helps convince those visitors to sign up. Of course there are other factors which affects the decision of your visitors to sign up or not (such as the content of your blog and etc.) but let’s focus on the opt-in form for now.
List Description
Tell your visitors what the list is all about when they subscribe. Are they getting an ecourse? Are they subscribing to your blog (where they will get all your latest blog posts in their email) or is it a series of tips to improve whatever that is you offering them?
Subscription Benefits
What do your visitors get when they give you their details? Do they immediately get some free stuffs like a free ebook, reports or videos and audio recordings? Tell them what they will get in return for their name and email address. This is sometimes referred to as an ethical bribe.
Compelling Imagery
Use compelling imagery of whatever that is you are offering for subscribing to your mailing list. This helps when the visitors sees a visual representation of what they are getting. The word here is visual representation. Show an ecover or a picture of a CD or something similar.
Required Fields
Do you really need to ask them for their telephone number? Make it simple and not too personal. Ask only for information that you will need to effectively communicate with your subscribers. Never ask for more than just their name and email address.
Some have suggested to ask for the email address only but you will lose the advantage of personalization. This means you can’t greet them with their name in each and every message that you send them. Very debatable but it is entirely up to you.
Subscribe Button
Should the button simply say Subscribe? What about Please Give Me The Free Report Now!? Think about it. Which one would you most likely click when you see it? When creating a new opt-in form (or editing an existing one), think about changing the subscribe button text to something else other than the default.
Privacy Statement
If you can assure the privacy of the details of your subscribers, why not do it? Assure them with something as simple as; We respect your privacy and will never sell, rent or share your personal details.
Unsubscribe Promise
You may be afraid to do this at the risk of getting higher unsubscribe rate but it may work in your favor. Telling your visitors that they can unsubscribe will also assure them that it is not an obligation to stay subscribed to the list if whatever they are getting does not meet their expectation.
Free Subscription
You may not thought about it at all but mentioning that subscribing to your list is completely free can also help. Those who are not familiar with newsletters, ezines, or blog subscription might not know these at all. Who knows, at the back of their mind, the word subscribe entails paying for the subscription.
Omnipresent Form
Make your form omnipresent on your site or blog. By that I mean you should make your opt-in form available on almost every page or post of your blog. If you do not want it to show on the sidebar all the time, you could consider the lightbox, hover or exit pop up type opt-in form.
Just Some Ideas On Opt-in Form
These are the tips that I can give you to improve your opt-in form. It is not the say all and end all of opt-in form but I hope it gives you some ideas to make a better opt-in form and hopefully boost your conversion rate. Have you got any ideas to boost opt-in rate and share with us?