Email marketing tip #6: How to create engaging opt-in forms

bysmartketeer

6.8K followers

Updated 6 years ago

Creating efficient, engaging opt-in forms is definitely not rocket science, but you’ll have to follow a few important rules:

• prevent or eliminate clutter; you’ll have to remove any unnecessary design element or confusing web page component that could distract your visitors; your ultimate goal is to help your visitors to focus better on your calls-to-action and to find the content they are after; so, don’t forget, the effectiveness of your opt-in form(s) starts with a clear, uncluttered environment

• place opt-in forms where they count; you should include opt-in forms on every important page of your site; but, that’s not enough, because different placements are going to yield different results, and you’ll have to find the best placements for every communication channel or marketing avenue; tracking your results and using analytics tools will help you to get useful feedback on which placements work best over time, but there is one mandatory principle: keep everything – value proposition, email entry field, call to action, privacy assurance, submit button, etc – above the fold! I will say it again: if you want to experience the best optimization from your opt-in form, make sure that all elements of it are above the fold!

• always communicate very clearly what they are going to receive; be sure to give your visitors a clear and concise value proposition for what they should allow you to include them on your email list

• use text boxes with white background and sample email format; this goes deeper than you may believe! it’s a proven fact that users are more comfortable with entering text into a white text box, and also recognize a white text box as an area where they are supposed to enter information; and always provide users – within the text box itself – with an example of what their submitted email address should look like (for example, “yourname@emailprovider.com”)

• write a truly persuasive call to action; according to Fluid Drive Media, on average, people see up to 250 online marketing messages a day! this is why you need to create a strong and literally outstanding call to action in order to increase the chances of people taking notice of your email opt-in form; so, be sure to write relevant and specific copy, to use active personal words, and of course, to add real value to your call to action

• use a large, engaging submit button; you need an easy-to-spot, eye-catching submit button which actively encourage visitors to click it; hopefully you have a distinctive website color palette in which a certain color is consistently used to indicate that the visitor should take an action (usually by clicking a link or a button), so use that color! otherwise, use a powerful, attractive, action-oriented color (red, blue, etc); finally, keep the text on your submission button short and friendly while also telling visitors exactly what you want them to do

• always assure privacy; use a short but strong statement to ensure visitors of your commitment to your privacy policy and that you won’t share, rent or sell their email

• don’t ask for too much information! every single additional step, requirement, input field, etc that makes the opt-in process longer and more complicated, will have a huge negative impact on your subscription rate! keep it as simple and painless as possible! all you need is a name and an email address, so don’t ask them about their favorite movies!

• avoid using pre-checked check boxes and third-party “ramifications”; I am pretty sure that you have already seen many times these negative consent opt-in forms with pre-checked checkboxes; unless you un-check that box – usually with a tiny, almost unreadable text next to it – you will find yourself subscribed to a bunch of different email lists, not only from the given site or company, but possibly also a whole range of third-parties you don’t even heard about; needless to say, it’s a shady, desperate method that must be avoided at all costs! let people check the opt-in box themselves!

• eliminate duplicates and invalid email formats; you’ll have to find an efficient technological solution (for example, PHP scripts using regular expressions) to validate the email format syntax before submission; otherwise you’ll end up collecting a bunch of invalid – usually mistyped – email addresses that can dramatically decrease your delivery rates; also, you’ll have to avoid and/or eliminate any duplicate entries to reduce the size of your database and more importantly, to control instances where a visitor may previously have marked you as spam and inadvertently or intentionally joins again to your list, only to mark you as spam again; this is a very serious issue, but fortunately, every well-respected email marketing platform has some sort of automated control mechanism against these problems;

• always display a confirmation page; once your new subscriber has submitted his/her email address, be sure to display a nice confirmation page confirming that you have received the subscription request; otherwise he/she may continue to click the submit button generating continuous requests and possible website errors; if you are using a double opt-in system, you can use these confirmation pages to remind your new subscriber that he/she needs to check his/her inbox and spam folder for the confirmation email and should add your email address to his/her address list; additionally, these confirmation pages are excellent opportunities to present users with other special offers, useful links or social outlets

• use professional templates and a high-quality design; the difference between a well-crafted opt-in form and a poorly designed email sign-up box can be – and no doubt, will be – the difference between healthy email list growth and slow, tedious and inefficient email list growth; no matter how compelling and attractive your offers are, if you are using a poorly designed, botchery-like opt-in form, you won’t be able to convince visitors to sign-up for your email list! believe me, this is definitely not a point where you want to be miserly or too frugally! every major email service provider offers a nice collection of professionally designed templates, but there is huge problem with each collection: everyone is using it, and we are talking about tens or hundreds of thousands of users!