Tips for staying in constant contact with your clients -
Effective opt-in forms
Email marketing is an extremely powerful and effective marketing
technique. It is also the most cost effective way in existence
today, to contact prospects and customers. If done incorrectly,
by sending unsolicited emails, it is called spam and gets you
blacklisted and hated by the ones you were trying to reach. If
done right, it is called permission-based email marketing and it
will build the value of your brand, increase your sales and keep
you in constant contact with your targeted audience, whether
prospects or existing clients.
When most people think of permission-based email marketing, they
automatically associate the concept with the old practice of
mass mailing, that is building a list, and emailing a message,
or a newsletter to that list. Today, the process is much more
elaborate, as you have to push your message across in a way that
will not piss people off, that will not get you blacklisted and
that will not get you labeled as a spammer.
In this article we will discuss one of the most underrated steps
in building a successful email marketing campaign: the sign-up
form.
With the introduction of the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003
(http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/canspam.htm) it became
increasingly important to make sure that your recipients opted
in, that is requested themselves to be emailed your information.
The easiest way to achieve this is through subscription, or
sign-up forms.
Here are some tips on how to effectively build sign-up forms,
gathered from experienced email marketers:
1. The more often your prospects are exposed to your sign-up
form, the greater the chance they will notice it and actually
sign up to receive your emails.
As with everything else in life, you have to be very careful as
not to reach the saturation point, which is the point at which
your viewer gets annoyed.
Our studies have found that strategically, it is best to place
your forms in one of the following locations:
- On the top right of a page; - On the left hand navigation bar;
- At the bottom of the page, directly after the relevant content.
2. Entice your subscribers.
An effective sign-up or opt-in form is as effective as your
enticement campaign. You have to convince people to trust you
enough to give you their real names and email addresses.
Explain the benefits of subscribing (ex. "to receive tips,
tricks and techniques on how to...."), include a few samples and
testimonials. Finish it up with a strong call to action.
3. Offer opt-in incentives.
Properly used incentives can significantly increase opt-in rates.
Some of the most proven and effective incentives in use are:
- Free whitepapers or e-books (you can find one on almost any
topic, and if you don't, then consider writing one yourself);
- Opt-in discount or a free service (for example, if you are a
web hosting company, you can offer one month free hosting);
- Special report.
Whatever incentive you chose to offer, do not forget to follow
up on your promise. In your welcome message, you should
automatically provide a link to the free product - if
applicable, for example if you are giving away a free report or
an e-book, then provide a download link - or a coupon (discount)
code that you are ready to take automatically online or via
phone.
4. Design your form with the user in mind.
Walk through your form yourself after you put it online and see
if you would be annoyed by it or if you would find it easy and
comfortable.
Some tips to remember:
- People use various devices and browsers today. Make sure your
form and the entire page the form is on is readable by all
browsers. Do not place the form on a page that is heavy in
graphics and multimedia, as people generally don't have too much
patience if the page is slow to load.
- Do not forget people who browse the web on PDAs. You might
think I'm nuts, but it's a reality, a lot of people now browse
on their Blackberrys and Treos. This is especially important if
your opt-in form is a link inside an email message. People do
click on those links on their PDAs and you don't want to lose
them, as after they read your message, they will not go back to
it again, on a regular computer. You want them to sign up right
there, on the spot. So make those forms simple, use only plain
and traditional HTML. Also, things shift on a PDA screen so try
to borrow one and see how your form looks like and make the
appropriate size adjustments.
- Don't forget to make sure that the TAB key advances through
the fields in the proper order and that the ENTER key submits
the form. You'll be surprised to know that a lot of people are
turned off at the slightest misbehavior of your form. You'll
also be surprised to know that the vast majority of form fillers
rely solely on the keyboard. If hitting the ENTER key activates
a link instead of submitting the form, you lost them.
- Do not ask for too much information, at least in the initial
opt-in stage. People are reluctant to fill up long
questionnaires, especially that their intention was not
specifically to fill up your form but you enticed them to do so.
Name and email should be sufficient. Collect your demographic
data later on.
- Have a privacy statement on the page where the form is, or as
a link, accessible directly from the page with the form. People
trust companies that openly display privacy policies and promise
not to sell their data. Remember that with opt-ins, they can't
just put fake data on or use those "shopping" email addresses,
but they trust you with their real contact information.
- If you are rusty at creating HTML forms, use an opt-in form
generator from a reputable email marketing solutions provider,
such as http://www.bsleek.com/emailmarketing.