Stand Out & Entice – Optimizing Your Email Sign-Up

The foundation of your email program is getting the opt-in, setting proper expectations and starting the relationship off on the right foot. That’s why it’s critical to evaluate and optimize the first few touchpoints in the process: the sign-up location, form, subscription landing page and welcome message.

PART 1: STAND OUT AND ENTICE
If you want to get the most opt-ins possible, make your sign-up obvious and visible. Do NOT make people search.  While this is very common-sense advice, I’m surprised at how many businesses do not prioritize this lead generator and make finding the sign-up difficult, or in some cases, impossible.
Additionally, highly consider moving the sign-up to the top part of the page.  Clearly, you can always test this against other locations – like the bottom – to be sure this is the best fit.
Use tactics like bolding, different color font, graphic buttons with a stand-out background color, nearby animation and/or white space around the call-to-action to help give the sign-up prompt more visual punch and draw the eye to it.
In addition to the tips above, it’s also a good idea to enable your sign-up to live on every page of your site, so it can be seen no matter where people enter. Don’t limit yourself to just the home page.
Beyond being visible and easily located, it’s also really important that you sell the sign-up! Simple requests like “sign up for email” or “sign-up for our newsletter” don’t really tell me much about what I’m getting, why I should care and how often I’ll be receiving mail.
For best results, explain the benefits of signing up and set expectations:
▪ mention frequency
▪ explain what will be sent
▪ link to an example newsletter or email if possible
▪ consider offering an incentive (coupon/contest entrance) with sign-up

Do a shortened version by your sign-up prompt. Example: “Sign up for our exclusive weekly promotions and get an instant 10% coupon!” Consider a more detailed explanation at the sign-up form – if you’re asking for more than just email address.
Kristen Gregory