Make the most of your email sign-up page
Your email sign-up page is not just a way to collect opt-in information; it’s an opportunity to engage in a dialogue with your future subscribers. You can use your email sign up page to promote your email program and your subscribers can use the page to sign up and indicate their preferences. Clearly communicating the type of email communication you send can increase your customers’ trust in your business, leading to increased sign-ups. By carefully considering the type and amount of information you collect, you offer some control to your customers in regards to the information they will receive from you. And by collecting better data, you can better target your subscribers, leading to higher open rates.
Things to consider when building a great email sign-up page:
- Make it interesting and/or fun. Promote the email publication as a stand-alone product. Communicate the value it will have to your customers if they sign up. Remember that you can use this page as a landing page if you promote your email publication on third party websites, etc.
- Provide a sample newsletter. Have a full graphic version of the newsletter that potential subscribers can view. This sample should be the real deal showing everything from the subject line at the top of the newsletter to the unsubscribe links at the bottom. This is important: it provides a better picture (literally) of what your customers are signing up for and it legitimizes your email communications by showing that you play by the rules (you have unsubscribe links, etc.).
- Link to archived newsletter content. Sharing archived newsletter content on your website will demonstrate to your customers your commitment to providing valuable information in your emails.
- Incentivize the sign-up. Mention that in the first email you will receive a promo code for X% off, or something similar.
- Keep it simple. Only ask for the information you need and intend to use. An overly long sign-up page can lead to abandonment of the sign-up process.
- Email change of address. Make sure you allow customers to update their email addresses.
- Use drop down menus wherever possible. Using drop down menus for things like city, state, and country will ensure you get responses that you can use for targeting and will eliminate misspellings, abbreviations, etc. that you cannot target with.
- Validate the information. Validate zip codes to ensure they’re real. Validate email addresses. Validate everything you can.
- Do more with less information. If you have your programmers populate fields on the backend you can ask for less information from your customers but still get what you need to work with. For example, from the zip code, programmers can auto-populate fields for city and state.
- Clearly state the frequency of the emails you send (daily, weekly, monthly, etc.). Better yet, let your customers choose the frequency they prefer.
- Provide choice. Not every customer wants to read every message. If you can provide several different email publications, let them choose which interests them the most. Give your customers what they want and your value will increase in their eyes. Remember, you can use your newsletters to cross sell your other email subscriptions.
- Clear way to unsubscribe. If the sign-up page is also a preference/profile page from which subscribers unsubscribe, make sure it’s very clear how to unsubscribe.
- Be polite. Make sure you have a Thank You/Confirmation page that appears after customers submit the sign-up page. Thank them for signing up and let them know what will happen next (they will receive a welcome email in the next couple hours, they will begin receiving email in the next week or so, etc.—whatever applies).