Creating and displaying opt-in forms on your website might not deliver instant results. Don’t worry! Try the five tricks described below to increase opt-in form submissions and lead generation from the right audience.
1. Display Multiple Opt-in Forms
An easy way to boost opt-ins is to display multiple opt-in forms on your website. For example, you can show the same offer on the same page or on different pages throughout your site. You can also display different offers on the same page or on different pages using page-level targeting techniques.
This is an area where testing is critical. You don’t want to inundate visitors with opt-in forms, so you’ll need to experiment to find the perfect balance between a large number of opt-ins and too many forms.
One of the biggest mistakes you can make when building your email list is to assume people will find your opt-in form. Give them a variety of ways to find your forms, or you’ll lose opportunities to grow your list. For example, consider using a welcome mat form, a sidebar form, an exit intent pop-up form, and an inline form in your blog posts.
2. Use Calls to Action to Guide Visitors to Your Opt-in Forms
Sometimes, you won’t be able to include a full opt-in form in certain areas of your website. Instead, you can use calls to action that guide visitors to your opt-in forms.
For example, include a link with a call-to-action next to the submit button within the comment area of your blog posts. Add a call to action in your blog or website header as well as to your social media pages and profiles. You can even add a signup button to your Facebook Page! And don’t be afraid to ask your existing customers and email subscribers to share your opt-in form link with other people.
After someone submits your opt-in form, create a strong call to action displayed on the thank you page or confirmation email message asking them to invite their friends to subscribe to your newsletter or download your lead magnet, too.
One of the most effective places to include an opt-in call to action message for ecommerce businesses is on the customer’s shopping cart page. Here, they’re already engaged with your brand, so it’s the perfect time to invite them to subscribe to your list!
But don’t stop there. You should also include an opt-in call to action in your abandoned shopping cart campaigns. Even if someone isn’t ready to make a purchase (and hopefully, you can change that person’s mind with abandoned cart email campaigns), they might be ready to download your free lead magnet.
Yes, closing a sale is better, but getting a prospect into your marketing funnel with an opt-in is better than nothing! Once they’re on your list, you can continue to engage with them via email to try to convert them from a lead to a customer.
3. Offer Options
If your offer exceeds your audience’s needs, you might need to offer different options to boost conversions. For example, if visitors are promised a daily email newsletter when they submit your opt-in form, that might equate to too much email for some people. If your email marketing provider and opt-in form tool allow it, offer multiple subscription offers such as daily, weekly or monthly.
Another example involves allowing visitors to choose not just the frequency of communications they’ll receive from you but also the types of messages they’ll receive. You can offer options to receive informational or promotional content as well as options to receive messages related to specific topics.
For instance, a health coach might offer options to receive only content about weight loss, exercise, recipes, or low cholesterol diet tips. Assuming the health coach publishes enough content to fill all of these topics, giving people this type of choice not only makes them happier but also allows the coach to segment his or her audience.
If the coach knows that only some members of his or her audience are interested in weight loss, then content related to weight loss products can go directly to those people in the future but not to audience members who aren’t interested in weight loss.
4. Segment Your Audience and Offer Lead Magnet Choices
You can also segment your audience by offering lead magnet choices. For example, a pop-up opt-in form that appears when someone visits a specific page on your website could give people a choice to download one of two ebooks on topics relevant to the page but different from each other.
A follow-up email marketing campaign could include a link to download the second ebook as well, but based on the visitor’s choice when he or she initially submitted the form, you can segment that person based on a specific interest. This is valuable information for future email marketing.
5. Test Your Opt-in Forms
The best way to test your opt-in forms in order to create the highest converting forms possible is to conduct A/B split tests. In simplest terms, an A/B split test requires that you create two different versions of the same opt-in form. You change one element between the two forms, which is the element you’re testing.
For example, you could create two identical forms with different headlines. Everything is the same except one element. This is critical because if you change more than one element, you won’t know which altered element was responsible for any differences you see in your results.
If your email marketing provider or opt-in form tool offers split testing, you can create both forms (version A and version B) and publish both to display randomly in the same position on your website.
You could display version A to 50% of visitors and version B to the other 50% of visitors. Once you have some data to compare the number of opt-ins received from each form, you can compare them and determine the winning form. Remove the underperforming form and show only the winning form to all future visitors.
You can perform A/B split tests whenever you want on a wide variety of elements. Some of the elements email marketers commonly test include:
- Headline
- Images
- Colors
- Fonts
- Videos
- Messages
- Size or color of the “submit” button
- Shapes
- Placement on your website
- Timing when form is displayed
- Position of elements such as the “submit” button or images
When conducting A/B split tests, make sure you run your tests long enough to confidently determine a winner. Also, just as scientists perform experiments multiple times before deeming results to be reliable, you should run your tests at least twice.
Make sure you’re testing both versions of your form at the same time rather than displaying one form for a few days and then the other form for a few days after that. Otherwise, you won’t know if your results were affected by your opt-in form or by the audience visiting your site on different days.
Adapted from Ultimate Guide to Email Marketing for Business by Susan Gunelius
Susan Gunelius
Susan Gunelius is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Women on Business. She is a 25-year veteran of the marketing field and has authored ten books about marketing, branding, and social media, including the highly popular Ultimate Guide to Email Marketing, 30-Minute Social Media Marketing, Content Marketing for Dummies, Blogging All-in-One for Dummies and Kick-ass Copywriting in 10 Easy Steps. Susan’s marketing-related content can be found on Entrepreneur.com, Forbes.com, MSNBC.com, BusinessWeek.com, and more. Susan is President & CEO of KeySplash Creative, Inc., a marketing communications company. She has worked in corporate marketing roles and through client relationships with AT&T, HSBC, Citibank, Intuit, The New York Times, Cox Communications, and many more large and small companies around the world. Susan also speaks about marketing, branding and social media at events around the world and is frequently interviewed by television, online, radio, and print media organizations about these topics. She holds an MBA in Management and Strategy and a Bachelor of Science degree in Marketing and is a Certified Professional Career Coach (CPCC).
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