Email marketing is using the power and influence of email. With all of the various ways of communicating including text messaging, the social media channels, and forums, email marketing is about the best way to reach people when they are in their most relaxed state of mind.
Usually when the hardest part of the day is over, or before it has begun, someone will sit down, relax for a while and check their email messages. A nice short message with some niche related content that they might find interesting could get some quality attention from our readers and clicks on our links to our websites.
In this article we’ll discuss:
- What are Opt-in forms
- Pop-up forms
- Single vs Double Opt-in
- Setting up the form
- Be mobile friendly
- Preview before going live
What is an Opt-in form?
An Opt-in Form is a type of consent agreement used online between two or more parties acknowledging an interest in a product or service and authorizing the use of email to contact them with further information. When someone submits an opt-in form, they are giving another person permission to send them content like email newsletters, product sales alerts, and other relevant material.
There are a number of different ways to get your opt-in forms in front of website visitors, for example pop-up forms on the home page, landing pages, product pages, and widgets throughout your website.
Double Opt-in method
This is another small step that requires the visitor to confirm by clicking on a link in an email waiting in their inbox. This added step will reduce the number of sign-ups but will usually increase the quality of those that submit their email address.
Pop-up forms
Pop-up forms are created so that your website visitors and customers can conveniently and easily sign up for your email list. They sometimes can be negatively viewed due to improper usage and be seen as more of a nuisance. I have left many websites because when I’m trying to read a nice post a pop-up(s) keeps popping up!
It’s important to be mindful of your audience which comes to check out some of your quality article content and not to sign up for anything.
Be more subtle with pop-ups and don’t overuse them or repeatedly disturb the viewers as they try to read your article post. When they are used wisely pop-ups can certainly enhance viewer browsing experience and help get more sign-ups and in turn more engagement and potential sales.
Choose the right opt-in
When you’re setting up the autoresponder and creating a pop-up you’ll have a choice to select either single opt-in or double opt-in. As mentioned above the single makes it one easy step for those signing up and the double opt-in will produce a slightly lower number of sign-ups but they will be a more interested group.
Setting up the opt-in form
When setting up the opt-in form let the viewer know what to expect whether it be a pdf, eBook, tutorial video, etc. The purpose and frequency of email contacts can also be stated, daily, weekly, monthly, or occasionally.
An example of a short message could be “Sign-up for product updates in your mailbox” or “Sign up to receive our weekly specials and updates”.
Be mobile friendly
It’s important to optimize the form for mobile users phones. More and more the audience is viewing on a smartphone and pop-ups can be quite annoying and chase away the readers. Most autoresponders are mobile friendly by default so that the audience can easily submit their email addresses to your list from any device.
Use a short form
Don’t use a long subscribe form asking for more viewer information than is necessary as people will shy away from giving away the info or the time to fill out the form. The shorter is always better and if possible an opt-in form just asking for the viewers email address is best used and most responded to.
Test it out – Preview
Be sure to test out or preview your efforts before the opt-in goes live to the audience, making sure that everything is working fine. You can make adjustments as needed to serve the viewing audience with the best experience possible.
Another thing that is very important is to be sure to leave an encouraging, exhorting call-to-action that moves people to finish the sign-up process.
Give a warm welcome
When setting up the autoresponder you can make the viewers first autoresponse a special warm welcome for signing up to your list. A discount or a free gift, video, pdf helps soften the reader’s heart to open your emails. It’s a great idea to get into the habit of thinking ahead so that you don’t run out of content for next week’s mailing.
