It's an unfortunate fact of online business that your e-mail newsletter sign-up form can actually be costing you customers. You must scrutinize every aspect of your subscription form in order to make it as effective and appealing as possible. Here are some tips:
1) Spread it around. Your subscription form should be available at every possible junction of your customer's online experience on your Website. One of the preferred ways is to incorporate it directly in a vertical skyscraper navigation bar; another is to have it set up as a floating section that appears on every page. It is advisable to display the form even on pages where you would not ordinarily think of placing it, such as the site map or the shipping options pages.
2) Make it stand out. Although flashing colors and marquee scrolling were mercifully left behind in the clumsy HTML experimentation of the 1990s, there are many tasteful and acceptable ways to make your subscription form stand out, such as featuring it in brighter colors or setting it apart from the rest of the content with a specific border or background design. Never bury your sign-up form below the fold or set it in microscopic type.
3) K.I.S.S.—Keep It Simple, Seller! The amount of consumer resistance increases with the amount of information you are requesting, so structure your sub form to require only for name and email address, but feature an option (and matching incentive) for subscribers to provide additional personal and demographic data.
4) Explain how you respect privacy. Virtually every e-mail user in the known universe has been hit by spam, so your prospects need reassurance that their e-mail address will not be publicized or sold in any way. An honest and clear statement describing your airtight privacy protection policy right on your sign-up form will mitigate hesitancy among potential subscribers.
5) Be clear on what they'll get and when. No one wants hourly updates on the state of the Liechtensteinian widget industry, so lucidly specify the content that subscribers will receive, focusing on the value of that content, and be very specific about the frequency of that communication. If you want them to provide you with their e-mail address, you'd better provide them with very specific reasons for them to do so.
6) Ask for their "main" e-mail address. Many e-mail users have several addresses, which they use for a variety of purposes, including a low-priority "catch-all" address for sign-ups—which is not necessarily where you want your communications to end up. Simply changing the wording of your subscription form to request their "main" or "primary" e-mail address can augment your success.
7) Cross-promote your newsletters. If you are offering multiple newsletters or other periodic online communications, give prospects the option to sign up for these ancillary subscriptions as well. For instance, if you are obtaining a subscriber for your books newsletter, providing the option to sign up for your music or film newsletter as well can boost your overall numbers.
8) Weigh your words carefully. A single word can lose a customer. Are you asking your prospect to subscribe or to sign up? Even though both may be free, there is an association of cost attached to the former term, so you may find that the latter increases your response rate. If you are appealing to a generally noncomputer savvy audience you may want to avoid asking them to choose between HTML and text-only versions, as they may not comprehend the difference.
9) Verify the syntax. John@yaho.com, mary@hotmailcom, and fred@gmale.com are duds that will result in inevitable bounces. It is a relatively easy task to set up an automated syntax checker that will catch misspellings and request that the submitter correct them.
10) Test, test, and test some more. Each and every one of the previous nine tips has ample room for individual testing to suit your specific form. Tweak every possible element, and run sufficient tests to zero in on the most-effective variants for your particular purposes.
Your e-mail sign-up form is a critical component of your online business and thus deserves meticulous consideration and attention. Fine-tuning your form will serve to energize your response rates and amplify your reach.
Hal Licino is the author of two books and an e-mail marketing advocate for e-mail marketing service Benchmark Email.
