10 tips for better sign-up forms
To do email marketing, you need email addresses. And your biggest source of these addresses is usually website visitors. And a common way to get their email addresses is through the ubiquitous sign-up form.
Or put another way, the sign-up form is an absolutely critical part of your whole email marketing effort.
A poor sign-up form is like opening a shop and forgetting to give it an entrance. But this gateway to email marketing success is often the runt of the creative litter...left to fend for itself as a web design afterthought.
Yet a few minor adjustments to that form can do more for your bottom line success than weeks of investment in campaign design and analysis. Here are 10 tips...
1. Put the form where people can see it
That might not sound like the most enlightening piece of advice you ever read. But look around the web.
- How many websites have the sign-up form below the fold, where it never gets seen?
- How many don't even have a sign-up opportunity on every page?
Nobody uses a form they can't see or find. Put it on every page. Put it up top (conventional wisdom says top right). Test different locations to find the place that works best for you. Test different formats to find one that attracts the most sign-ups.
But do remember that list growth isn't your only website objective. Don't give the sign-up form prime position if it means taking away other website elements that drive even more revenues. Think holistically.
2. Allay their privacy fears
Nobody wants their email address to get out into the wild, ripe for plucking by every passing spammer. They need reassurance that you're going to respect the confidentiality and privacy of that address.
So tell them.
Put in a short statement to that effect and a link to a more detailed privacy declaration. Be honest and forthright about what happens to that address.
They need that reassurance at the point where they make the commitment. So put it right next to the field where they enter their address.
3. Tell them what they'll get
There is a philosophy which says to keep the potential subscriber in the dark about your email content, so they have to sign up to find out what it is. But unless your potential subscriber is your biggest fan, that isn't going to happen.
There's no shortage of email content out there. And people value their email address too highly to give it away without any expectation of a return.
You're going to have to sell them on the value of signing-up. You need to persuade them of the benefits of handing over that precious email address.
Treat it like an exercise in sales persuasion. Benefits, not features. Tell them what they'll get. But more importantly, tell them how they'll benefit.
Will it help them do their jobs better? Make then laugh? Save them money? Keep them informed? Keep them ahead of the competition, their colleagues or their peers?
Give them a reason to make the exchange - their email for your valuable content.
4. Tell them how often they'll get it
Successful email marketing is about meeting expectations. If you don't meet or exceed expectations, you lose the recipient. They may even report you as spam.
So you need to control those expectations as much as you can. And an upfront declaration of your email frequency is an important element in that. You don't have to give an exact schedule. But would-be subscribers need to know if you send daily, weekly or quarterly.
5. Show an example
If you think your emails speak for themselves when it comes to demonstrating value to the recipient, then let people look at one.
There's often limited space around a sign-up form to truly "sell" your email offerings. Consider a link to a more detailed sign-up page, with more information, copy and examples to sell the would-be recipient on the value of signing-up.
6. Not all addresses are equal - get the right one
"Enter email address to subscribe." Nothing wrong with that.
But don't ask for any old email address. Ask for the "main" email address. Or use some similar adjective to get people to part with the address they pay most attention to and are likely to hold onto longest.
It works. Change the wording on your form and observe how the quality of the addresses changes afterwards. You may get a pleasant surprise.
7. Avoid email marketing jargon
Oh we love jargon don't we? But your would-be subscribers are not marketing professionals or website designers. Use words that people understand. Here's an example:
Maybe you let people choose between a "text-only" version and an "HTML" version? How many "normal" people do you think even know what an HTML version is?
Consider each word carefully. Do you ask people to subscribe or sign-up? The former has more of a "cost" association, even if it's actually free to subscribe.
8. Get the email address first, then ask the questions.
The initial sign-up form should capture the email address, possibly a name or preferred salutation and nothing else. Leave the demographic questions to later pages in the sign-up process (that's a subject for another article).
Getting an email address alone is asking for a big commitment. Don't frighten them off by asking for too much, too early. Keep that initial sign-up form simple. Besides, you won't have the space for more than one or two data fields.
9. Check the syntax
If you can, use an automated check so that your system immediately identifies addresses with obvious typos or errors. Most email service providers have this feature built-in.
You don't want people signing up with addresses like this:
mark@hotmial.com
mark@gmail
If you catch them straight away, you can ask the submitter to correct them. And you won't get a dud email on your list that means a bounce later. Bounces are bad. Bounces are nature's way of telling us that we're doing something wrong.
See this blog posting for more explanation on this.
Alternatively, you can ask subscribers to enter their email address twice: evidence suggests this leads to more sign-ups.
10. Test
If you're not sure what works best, or if you disagree with the above, then test. Try a change and observe the results.
Does moving the sign-up form around increase the sign-up rate? Does adding a privacy declaration bring improvements?
Nothing is set in concrete. Experiment to find out what works for your website and list.
Now go look at your sign-up form and think about what you might do better (advice I intend to take myself!)
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