Does your form ask for just the information you need to build and engage a list of subscribers, or does it go above and beyond that?

As MarketSherpa has pointed out, “above and beyond” in this case may lead to signup conversion rates and information quality that fall below your expectations.

In the latest Chart of the Week, they illustrate why name and email should typically be all the information we ask for in our email newsletter sign up forms. Take a look:

Name and email are the two fields most likely to be provided accurately, and still, even these fields are “fibbed” sometimes (e.g. 32% of respondents to their survey said they didn’t always provide an accurate email address).

That’s one of a few good reasons to use confirmed opt-in for all of your campaigns. The fact that respondents were generally less willing to give other information accurately (and presumably *at all* in some cases) is a convincing reason to ask for only what you need from your website visitors.

Alas, sometimes less means more! I couldn’t resist .

Would you spend money on pay-per-click ads (i.e. Google Adwords) and not bother to optimize your landing page content?

What about the price of your product, or incentives you use to build urgency — they affect your conversion rate, so you probably test them, right?

Now… what about your confirm rate? If you could do something to influence the percentage of people who confirm their signups to your email campaign, you would… wouldn’t you?

I recently came across an AWeber user who was frustrated with his confirm rate. As I talked with him, I realized that a lot of you may be missing the same opportunities to get more of your website visitors to confirm.

A Quick Word on Confirm Rates

Confirm rates, while they’ll never be 100% (nor should they be), can actually get quite high. It’s not at all unreasonable to shoot for a confirm rate greater than 75%.

On To The Example — Stuart and His Web 2.0 Videos

Getting subscribers to confirm is just like any other part of your marketing process — it can and should be tested/tweaked.

I was on Twitter the other day and saw a comment from AWeber user Stuart, who helps people learn to build web 2.0 applications through a series of video lessons.

He builds his list with an offer of sample videos, and he requires people to confirm to get the videos (a great idea, by the way). Still, he was wondering why his confirm rate wasn’t higher.

I got in touch with him and took a look at his signup process. Immediately, a few things he could do to get more subscribers to confirm jumped out at me.

Like many people, he simply hadn’t put enough attention into making his confirm process a good subscriber experience.

Recommendations To Stuart To Improve His Confirm Rate

Below is a link to view the email I sent Stuart, verbatim. That way, you can see exactly what types of tactics you can use to max out your own confirm rate:

Read The Suggestions

You’ll see that while many of them are relatively simple tactics, they’re exactly the sort of ideas that you may have overlooked in your own confirm process.

How Does Your Confirm Process Look Lately?

How good are your thank you page and confirm email at getting subscribers to complete their signup?

As you read that email, did you see places where you could apply those concepts to your own email marketing campaign?

What are you doing to max out your confirm rate?

Share your ideas below so we can all benefit!

As attendees to our web form webinar know, getting website visitors to notice your form is a critical part of building your list.

Many people supplement their inline web forms with various types of popup and hover-style forms.

Today, we’re happy to announce a new type of popup form that AWeber users can use to grab visitors’ attention and present them with an opportunity to subscribe.

Read on for more details and a short video.

Lightbox Forms: Focus The Reader’s Attention on Your Signup Offer

You may already be creating unblockable hover-style popups in AWeber that slide or fade into your web page. They’re a great alternative to traditional popups for getting people to consider signing up to your email newsletter.

The new lightbox forms further focus your visitors’ attention on your form by “greying out” the remainder of your page until the visitor either subscribes or closes the form (which is easy for them to do – they just click “close” or hit the ESC key on their keyboard).

RSS Subscribers: to see how these forms work and how to create one, click through to the 1:53 video on our blog.

Pretty cool, right?

Not Using Popups Now? Give Them a Shot!

If you aren’t at least testing popup forms with your site now, I strongly recommend you do so. While they don’t work for everyone, they have the potential to raise your opt-in rate significantly, meaning you get more subscribers from your existing website traffic.

Do you use popups now to build your list? Try the lightbox forms out against your current popups and see if they raise your opt-in rate!

One of 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 up.

But sometimes it helps to hear what others outside the email marketing world have to say.

Our Director of Technology, Andy, passed me a blog post a while back that talks about usable registration forms.

The name of the post — “User Registration Pages Suck.” — might sound harsh, but it’s a helpful view into what your visitors may be thinking when they’re asked to sign up for something.

Lesson #1: What’s In It For The Subscriber?

If you’re going to require the subscriber to fill out a signup form, it had better be for something valuable.

In the first example on Codeulate, a signup form was required to signal approval of an article with a “thumbs-up.” Who’s going to be willing to fill out a signup form just to vote on an article?

Lesson #2: Make It Easy To Sign Up

Q: What’s the goal of an email signup form?

A: To get opt-in email subscribers.

Q: Why?

Q: So I can send them email messages.

Q: What do you NEED to know about them to do that?

A: Their email address. Maybe a name so I can address them personally.

Seems simple enough, yes?

So why are so many signup forms a mile and a half long? Do we really need to know company name, position title, budget, etc?

I’m all for targeting and segmentation, but they serve a purpose: to reach the right people with the right message at the right time.

If you’re asking someone for all this information up front, before they even know you, let alone trust you, many otherwise good prospects aren’t going to sign up, and then it won’t matter how narrowly you segment and target your subscribers, because you won’t have subscribers to reach.

This is why forms like the first one Codeulate points out bug me so much.

It’s a registration form for a website. Not a medical history form. Not a mortgage application. Not a tax return.

Why would you want to mimic those things with a form that, when you get down to it, is there to help you build a community around your website?

Take A Look at Their Recommendations

I don’t agree with everything the author says, particularly about delaying the signup as long as possible.

As we discuss in our webinars and elsewhere, using a signup form and an email campaign to build a relationship with visitors and get them back to your site is essential to your success.

That said, there are some good lessons here. Have a look, especially at the five suggestions at the end of the post.

One of the most important challenges facing restaurant and retail owners is in drawing back return customers to their locations.

Advertising for new customers can be very expensive, while relying on customers to take initiative to come back after a single visit can be risky and unprofitable business.

A popular, tried and true way to boost return business throughout the year is to send personalized birthday emails to customers.

Make Customers Feel Special on Their Birthdays

Personalization is one of those “X factors” in marketing, where singling someone out from a group in a way that reminds them of their individuality can pay great dividends.

What better time of year to single someone out and make them feel special than their birthday? This is when many of us are more than happy to take a break, relax our egos a bit, and celebrate ourselves.

What better time of year to single someone out and make them feel special than their birthday?

Some of us are also willing to spend (or have someone else spend) some extra money on things like gifts and special birthday dinners.

A taylored and targeted offer can be just the thing to make someone feel special and remember us when they’re making the spending decisions surrounding their special times.

Step 1: Collect the Necessary Information

Sending birthday emails is simple.

We just need to collect just two things from our customers at our locations and/or websites:

Their email addresses

Their birthdays

At your location, keep subscription cards at your counter and/or provide them with the bill to dining customers.

On your website, you can simply add a field to your signup form asking for birthday information.

Step 2: Schedule Monthly Birthday Emails

Once we’ve started to collect this information, all we need to do is schedule monthly messages to cover the birthdays of each month.

If you’re using AWeber, just segment your list creating what is called a “view” before and schedule them:

Learn How to Send Birthday Email with AWeber

Send Your Customers Birthday Email

By giving customers another reason to get your email newsletter, advertising birthday specials can help us grow our list of subscribers. Surprising them with special incentives to return to your location boosts business and helps to maintain a profitable subscription.

If you’ve been racking your brain thinking of ways to use your restaurant or store’s list and bring back customers, consider adding a birthday email to your campaign today.

Setting up your first email campaign and not sure what to do? Need a refresher course on how to put together a simple yet effective email marketing program to convert your website traffic into loyal customers?

Our own Sean Cohen turned up on the Recognized Expert Marketing Show last week with plenty of great advice for budding — and established — businesses.

Listen to Sean’s Email Marketing Advice

In this 34-minute interview, Sean talks to host Bob Sommers about:

Where to Get Message Ideas and Content

Keys to Getting More Subscribers Ethically

How Split-Testing Can Help You Grow Your List Faster

Text vs. HTML: Does It Really Affect Deliverability?

Listen To The Half-Hour Interview

Something a little different for Friday:

We get a lot of people asking what a “good” confirm rate is — out of everyone who signs up to your list, what proportion will open the confirm message and click on the link to activate their subscription to your list?

So, I thought I’d share some of our own results, from our own blog’s email subscribers.

Whether or not you’re new to running an online business, this question must have crossed your mind at one time or another. After all, as we often mention in our live email marketing webinars, your email campaign does not exist in a vacuum. If you don’t have traffic coming to your site, it can prove to be difficult to build a dedicated readership.

Jeff from our support team suggested to me that a resource covering this topic would be helpful to our customers. Since, support is a pipeline to the concerns of our customers, so when they talk, we listen. So, I put together an article that covers some of the basics.

Read some of our tips on how to build traffic to your website.

During yesterday’s Workshop/Q&A Webinar, Karen asked a great question:

We commonly get this question from people who are concerned that putting a signup form on their site will be difficult, or feel that in order to maximize response, they need to make significant changes to the appearance of the form.

Listen to Marc’s and my take on this, and then let us know what you think.

Who do you trust on the Internet? How do you decide who is or isn’t trustworthy when in most cases, all you initially have to go on is a website?

Not long ago, we talked about trust and welcome messages (as part of a larger discussion of urgency in email marketing).

Your welcome message is key to establishing/furthering your credibility and reputation, but today I want to back up to an even earlier point in your email campaigns: