Today we’ll discuss a proven formula for encouraging website visitors to email sign-up forms for newsletters and notifications. You’ll also find tips and tricks to help put your new form into practice quickly using Campaign Monitor, Mailchimp and Constant Contact.
the basics
getting crafty
behind-the-curtain
resources
summary
An email sign-up form is for hand-raisers – those interested in an ongoing relationship with your brand – not everyone who visits your website. Keeping that in mind will help guide your design of the form; the information you request; and where it appears in their experience. Personal information that the visitor gives you should be protected with great sensitivity to privacy, always providing the means to control communications preferences (including opting-out of email completely).
the basics of email sign-up
An email sign-up form is not the same as website registration. “Registration” often occurs 1) as a part of an ecommerce shopping experience, 2) when more complete user information benefits their participation in a community or forum or 3) to help enable features that further personalize the experience based on your data and behavior. It’s easy to see why asking for more information than just a visitor’s email address is completely fair game in those scenarios. Email address is all that’s required to start communicating with hand-raisers, so if any other fields are requested – like first name, date of birth or geography – be sure to capture email first. Consider the following:
- Understand why you’re asking for an email. Is it to announce new products or events? Will you be heavily promoting purchase of your craft beer?
- Tell subscribers what valuable content they’ll receive from you and how often. If possible, link to previous email newsletters as examples. Keep your promise simple.
- The average attrition rate (unsubscribers from your list) each month is about 2%. The more value you provide while respecting their privacy, the longer you keep their interest.
- Don’t ask for too much information right away for fear of losing trust and driving visitors from your website and brand.
- Make [a static version of] the form easy to find in the footer or the general navigation.
getting crafty with email sign-up
Collect the most accurate information possible from your subscribers during the sign-up process. The phrase “garbage-in, garbage-out” completely applies here: some visitors will do the minimum to receive whatever you promise. The goal is for your company to have warm email addresses – those subscribers who are opted-in, have been contacted within the last 2-4 months and are regularly engaging with your emails – and a well-designed form experience will help you avoid housecleaning your list later (often called list hygiene, or grouping your subscriber list according to value to the brand, often getting rid of inactives).
- Let subscribers know that their information is safe with your craft beer brand. Include text on the sign-up form that states their email address won’t be shared and their personal data is safe.
- Check for proper email formatting. There will always be a local-part (such as firstname.lastname, which appears before the @ symbol), the @ symbol and then a case-sensitive domain. Enabling the feature of your form that checks for proper email formatting prior to submission will save you time down the road and promote a cleaner list.
- A quality list over quantity will benefit your company in the long run. A double opt-in confirms that your lead wants to be added to your list twice: first on the website and second in a follow-up email that confirms their submission (and a valid email address).
- Consider enabling a captcha feature on your form before submission. Captcha is a type of challenge-response test used by websites to determine whether or not a visitor is human. Abusive traffic to your website could include automated form submissions that appear as blatantly promotional and often offensive content in your inbox. We use Google reCAPTCHA.
- Pay off the promise of valuable, relevant content with a welcome email soon after signup. This could take the form of a “Thanks for subscribing” note with downloadable resources that can be put to immediate use.
behind-the-curtain of email sign-up
When you introduce your sign-up form is just as important as how you deliver it. Where do you want visitors to find your form? At what point in their experience are they “ready” to make that level of additional commitment?
- Optimize your form for mobile devices. Most craft beer visitors will be accessing your brand via mobile, so having a sign-up form that looks great on any device is important.
- Use words, phrases and imagery that suits your brand. There’s nothing more off-putting to a prospect than awkward, academic formality when singing up.
- Test different timing for promotion of your form. Even if you have a navigation item labeled “connect” or something similarly static, you can experiment with pop-up and other devices that present your form at a triggered point in the experience. Options include time-, scroll- and action-based form display. Track to see which presentation captures the most sign ups.
- Promotional codes or incentives can also prompt sign up, such as free shipping on their first purchase or access to exclusive content.
- Set up tracking from the beginning to measure the success of your efforts. Common success metrics include open rate, click-through rate, clicks per link, conversion rate, bounce rate, unsubscribes, spam complaints, forwarding rate, time spent on email and overall list health.
resources
Tools to help your company quickly integrate sign-up form functionality:
Campaign Monitor Forms Plugin for WordPress Form Builder for Joomla! API for Drupal Integration with Magento Steps for Squarespace | Mailchimp Forms Plugin for WordPress CMC Extension for Joomla! API for Drupal Integration with Magento Steps for Squarespace | Constant Contact Forms Plugin for WordPress Signup Form for Joomla! REST API for Drupal Contact Sync for Magento Form for Squarespace |
We hope this review of proven ways to capture hand-raisers was valuable to your company. Next time we’ll look at capturing content worth sharing on your social media channels – certainly a hot topic lately!
MailChimp archive:
https://mailchi.mp/60c929477b9f/190430_email_signup?e=a83dcf3085
Download:
https://app.box.com/s/71ct11dgn4lcpbxm1yxlmfwcd9vz1jce