Opt-in email marketing tips

One of the main aims of an email marketer is to collect as many subscribers as he can. Almost the most important source of attraction of new subscribers is opt-in page. Its main goal is to convert as many potentials as possible to devoted subscribers. While creating the design of opt-in page you should remember of some simple riles, that will have a positive effect on increasing the number of your subscribers:

• Clean and Simple: the whole design of the opt-in page should be simple o that user can be versed with ease. At the same moment the page should encourage confidence, trust and value.
• Samples: you should think of placing some samples of your future messages, allowing future subscribers to get acquainted to your mailing.
• Awards: don’t forget to pay user’s attention on awards user can benefit from.
• Incentives: even the smallest incentives and discounts can motivate people to opt-in.
• Value Proposition: subscribers are ready to share their email address, but only in case they consider it worth sharing it. They won’t become your permanent subscribers if the email message you send won’t contain any valuable information for them.
• Privacy/Email policy: remember that your prospective subscribers want to be confident about your actions. It is recommended to include a brief note of email policy and place the link to complete Privacy Policy of your organization.
• Expectations: your subscriber should know exactly what to expect from you, how frequent and whether it will be your own mailing or you are going to send other communications from your organization. If you use a double opt-in approach, then explain you confirmation process to subscriber.

After the design of opt-in page is created you are ready to get customers to it. Your site is the main source of information for you future customer and subscriber, and the final action you expect of your visitor is to opt-in. Consider these hints to get your customers to opt-in page:

• Include some form of sign-in page link on every other page of your site. Make it easy for your visitors to find the opt-in page.
• Use only term obvious to everybody, such as “Newsletter”, “Email newsletter”, etc.
• To make new-comers interested in subscribing make sure you have kind of archive area with articles and newsletters on you Web site.
• Put special links for online retailers about benefits of your email newsletter, such as special deals and sales available only to subscribers.

One more important factor that affect on visitor’s decision to sign-up or not is the opt-in form. You have to design it so that obtain a right balance of information. Avoid asking too much information, especially don’t ask the information you cannot use in your email delivery and personalization or segmentation. Asking to little information may cause you problems in segmenting and making the email messages more relevant. It is recommended to include “re-enter email address” field, which lessen bounces to a significant degree.

The minimum information you need to ask for is:

1. First Name
2. Last Name
3. Email Address
4. Format preference (HTML or text-only).

All other fields could be considered optional, but still you don’t have to ignore them at all.

Friday, September 10th, 2010 : Email Marketing : No Comments