Inbox Ideas | Email Marketing Tips by AWeber

Easy Opt-In Form Tips

Posted by Justin Premick

Providing consistently great content in your messages is key to turning your subscribers into raving fans.

Before you can foster that relationship, however, you have to get them to subscribe. You know that once they do, they’re going to kick themselves for not having done so before…

…but they don’t know that yet, and unless they opt in to your list, they never will.

By convincing people to subscribe, and removing barriers to them doing so, you can bridge the gap between a website visitor and another soon-to-be-devoted reader of your email marketing campaigns.

Here are a few ways you can make your web forms more effective.

Put the Form in a Prominent Location.

If visitors don’t see the form, they won’t sign up, right? So put it in an easy-to-find spot. For most sites, this means near the top of the page.

I talk to a lot of people who want a “newsletter button” that visitors click on to display the form in a popup window. This is an alternative, but with this approach you risk popup blockers keeping the form from appearing. A simple inline form located near the beginning of the page avoids that completely.

Also, if you have a multi-page site and your visitors tend to browse the entire site, put the form on every page.

Keep it Short and Sweet.

Long forms may be tolerated for mortgage applications, but not opt-in subscriptions. When I go to a website, if the opt-in form looks like it’ll take me more than 10 seconds to complete, I’m put off. Remember, your competitors are only a click away.

Ask yourself: What do I need to get started with my subscribers? If you absolutely need your subscriber’s phone number or some other detail right now, OK, but if not, get it later as you further qualify him/her.

Give Visitors a Reason to Subscribe.

No matter how much value you’re delivering to your subscribers, your emails still take up real estate in their inboxes. Your visitors, who haven’t yet experienced the value you’re delivering in your messages, already get dozens to hundreds of emails a day.

Why Should They Make Room For You?

Clearly and concisely detail the benefits of subscribing. Use bullet points, bold text and other techniques to tell them why they’re going to be better off getting your emails.

This not only helps to get visitors to become subscribers, it also helps to build expectations which you can then meet to build trust and relationships with them.

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29 Responses

  1. Peter Koning
    September 20th, 2006 at 12:11 pm

    Great tips! I’ll put a small opt-in form on every page as part of the side bar, for non-subscribers to see.

  2. Charles
    September 20th, 2006 at 10:20 pm

    Better yet, put in a ful squeeze page and capture every e-mail or they don’t visit. Your results will be better.

  3. Sydney
    September 22nd, 2006 at 9:17 am

    I found that the popover option works best. These are not blocked by browsers. I have it set so it will only pop up once a day for each viewer. It tripled my subscribers.

  4. adib
    October 2nd, 2006 at 2:08 pm

    Yep, from my experience the pop hover form is the best choice. They will never miss your opt-in form

  5. Tom H.
    October 4th, 2006 at 2:58 pm

    Great Stuff!
    Since I have adjusted to "short and sweet" like you
    mentioned, I am getting a ton more subscribers
    every month.

  6. Jennifer Merer
    October 13th, 2006 at 8:15 am

    I’m a life coach living in Paris France.
    and I need more clients, more subscribers.
    I write newsletters every month; I’m in the process of changing a few things on my website to have visitors read these newsletters more easily(- make them accessible) but I would need your advice, your suggestions.What are my options? And of course, financial considerations will matter!
    Also, you in the states and I over here, if I were to choose you for setting this up for me, would it make it difficult? Thank you, J

  7. Garrett
    October 19th, 2006 at 10:31 pm

    We have noted that in most cases, adding the words
    "We Respect Your Email Privacy" below the final opt
    in field will increase opt-ins. Please test this,
    but it always outperforms versus no privacy statement.

  8. » Back to the Basics - AWeber Blog
    October 25th, 2006 at 12:13 pm

    [...] Use our Web Form Generator tool to easily create the forms you’ll publish to your pages. Follow the video tutorial we offer on using this tool (for some useful suggestions, review Justin Premick’s Easy Opt-in Form Tips) [...]

  9. aalbury759
    October 29th, 2006 at 5:53 pm

    make it easy to use.

  10. Simon
    November 24th, 2006 at 9:11 am

    Use free videos or ebooks to subscribe in order to get the free gifts worth $xxxx…

  11. » Do Simple Opt-In Forms Build Credibility? - AWeber Blog
    December 8th, 2006 at 1:21 pm

    [...] I’m a big fan of making opting in easy, but I’ve always looked at it as an isolated interaction between subscriber and site. Meaning that you make your opt-in form quick-and-easy to fill out so people don’t abandon it. [...]

  12. Ken Wagner
    January 1st, 2007 at 2:38 pm

    I know how to creat optin forms and a little about installing them. My question is to install them do you have to 1. have a autoresponder? and/or 2.do you have to have a seperate server, 3. do you have to have hosting?

  13. Justin Premick
    January 2nd, 2007 at 2:09 pm

    Ken,

    1. An opt-in form is something that you can create outside of an autoresponder; however, an opt-in form in and of itself isn’t going to follow up with the people who fill it out.

    At AWeber, we help you to create the opt-in form with our Web Form Generator, and to automatically follow up with subscribers.

    2. You can put an opt-in form on any of your web pages…as long as you can make changes to the web page content/HTML, you can put an opt-in form on it. This is true for a free web page you would set up on a site like Geocities as well as your own domains. I’m not quite sure what you mean by "separate server" but hopefully this addresses your question.

    3. In order for your web page to be accessible online, it does need to be hosted. The opt-in form is simply part of the content of that web page (just like any text you would have on the page).

  14. Stanley Joshua Kudolo
    January 10th, 2007 at 10:21 am

    It is absolutely imperative to note that the first element of any relationship is contact.
    However contacts have many and diferent levels, approaches and fluidity.
    I do agree that e-mail opt ins can be taken as part of the process of relating to the outer world.
    Have we then considerd the above?
    Answering this will lead us to some findings.
    TO OUR SUCCESS.

  15. Luke
    January 15th, 2007 at 9:33 am

    Flippin’ brilliant post/blog.

    Very helpful comments too.

  16. Oliver
    January 18th, 2007 at 6:59 am

    Popups work well. We have tested them on a large list.

    But how can I customise the popup forms? I want to wrap the form in a wrapper with some CSS but have to do it through your interface because of the javascript link. There’s no ability to do this.

    So its a great tool… but a little ugly. Especially when you look at post-it notes like Adimpact.

    While I’m on the subject.. the standard Aweber unsubscribe screen could do with a makeover too.

  17. stefan
    April 28th, 2007 at 12:21 am

    I just signed up to Aweber I been very impressed with some newsletter I signed up for Richdreams, I like my name on the emails.

    I like this pop up http://www.adhspain.com

    and would like to make something catchy like it I know it works very well for the company

  18. » How Not to Make a Signup Form - AWeber Blog
    October 26th, 2007 at 8:58 am

    [...] We’ve talked a lot in this space about making it as easy as possible for your subscribers to get on your list. [...]

  19. Are Your Signup Forms Usable? - Email Marketing Tips on the AWeber Blog
    April 4th, 2008 at 10:56 am

    [...] the things we like to stress around here when it comes to building a subscriber list is that “simple signup forms are good, and that you shouldn’t make signing up hard because then people… don’t sign [...]

  20. Douglas Parsons
    April 9th, 2008 at 1:01 pm

    Very good info. I am checking out the other blog posts for more info and ways to use the opt-in forms. I have placed your form on my website and the names are coming in…

  21. Jeff
    July 18th, 2008 at 3:09 pm

    Does anyone have a few examples of site using very strong popover/pop hover forms?

    We’re relatively new to Web form strategy and could use some direction.

  22. Maya
    September 26th, 2008 at 2:15 pm

    When writing headlines, action statements (i.e. "Subscribe") works well when complimented with benefits (which explain the outcome of their action).

    Some great examples:

    1. Clickz sets expectations — "The ClickZ Weekly newsletter is the ideal way to make sure you miss nothing in the world of online marketing and advertising. It’s delivered once a week and consists of headlines, brief descriptions, and links to all ClickZ columns that have been published on the site over the previous week."

    2. Photojojo.com — The homepage is a subscribe page with the first sentence saying, "Congratulations. It’s your lucky day! You just found one damn fine photo newsletter." while keeping the subscribe form simple elements : (a) Subscribe to Photojojo, a twice-a-week newsletter (b) your email here (c) We solemnly swear: "No spam, not ever"

    Nice!

  23. Glenn Nicholas
    February 5th, 2009 at 7:56 pm

    Maya, we’ve found using an introductory sentence before the sign up fields as well as a closing message after (e.g privacy statement, or link to the current newsletter if it is a newsetter opt in) is very helpful. We’ve published a plugin for Aweber WordPress integration that lets you add these optional messages to each Aweber widget in your sidebar.

  24. 10 Questions to Ask When Creating Your Next Web Form - Inbox Ideas: Email Marketing Tips by AWeber
    March 10th, 2009 at 10:29 am

    [...] Have you covered the basics of a good web form? [...]

  25. Linda Spaanbroek
    March 10th, 2009 at 1:26 pm

    Hai! How can I change the look and feel of webforms created in aWeber?

  26. adam
    March 10th, 2009 at 2:35 pm

    Great tips here. I’ve designed a capture page, nearly done.

    1. Create a grabbing headline, that reminds them of the pain and also solution coming.

    2. Add text below to affirm what they will recieve.

    3. Bullet points of benefits after that.

    4. I even changed the button of the aweber form I got to grab their attention on what they’re subscribing too.

  27. Justin Premick
    March 11th, 2009 at 8:41 am

    Linda,

    You can make changes to the form fields, submit button text and headline in the Web Form wizard. To make other changes, add the form to your web page and then use your website editing software to further change the appearance of it, as you would for other content you add to your site.

    Adam,

    Sounds like you’re putting together a quality form! Once you’ve had it running for a while, be sure to split test your headline or submit button to see if you can increase your opt-in rate!

  28. Mark
    April 13th, 2009 at 4:57 pm

    Hey Justin

    Am I right in thinking that if I’m split testing webforms, then its not possible to edit the form in my HTML editor as I’m only given a javascript?

  29. Justin Premick
    April 14th, 2009 at 10:26 am

    Hi Mark,

    You can make some changes by placing the appropriate HTML tags around the split testing JavaScript. However, depending on what you’re split testing in your forms, you may not be able to customize them to the same extent as you can a single form using the raw HTML.

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