How To Optimize Your Forms To Build A Better Email List

Design Credits: Vecteezy.com

by Chintan Doshi, Guest Contributor

​It is important for you as a marketer to make sure that your message reaches the right audience at the right time with a relevant message, which will make them convert. However, most marketers research about the time but, they fail to personalize the message or draft it towards the right audience. The blame could be put on the email list, which not many organizations consider important.

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​Having a significantly segmented list is important if you want to improve your conversions. 

Marketers who use segmented campaigns note 760% increase in revenue.

With such importance rendered to email list, it is inevitable that you consider improving your website and blogs to get more subscribers on-board.

If you are someone who has a thorough understanding of email lists but have been facing issues with getting more subscribers on-board, then you should read on. We are going to talk about how email subscription forms can help you build a better list, and why you need to optimize the forms. 

Let’s begin with understanding what an email sign-up or subscription form is, and how it is important to a business.

Importance of email sign-up forms
It is important you ask permission from the subscribers or potential leads before you send them emails. However, it is not possible unless you have a subscription form on your website where the visitors can enter their email and other details. 

The sign-up form helps both the businesses and the visitors. The business gets a valid permission to conduct their nurturing activities while, the visitor who is now a subscriber gets all the latest information on their email. The subscriber is not just made aware of the products and services as well as the latest updates but is also moving forward in the funnel.

You now know the importance of an email sign-up form; let’s get you oriented with the best practices for creating the email subscription forms, which will eventually get on-board the potential leads. 

Email Form Best Practices

1. What do you want to achieve with the email sign-up forms? The answer is authentic and valid details of the subscriber. If this purpose is clear, you would know where to place the forms for maximum sign-ups. The idea is to make it contextual and place it on the conspicuous pages. For instance, if you have just written an ebook and want people to download it, then you will have a form that requests people to share their details. There will be a small box at the end which will seek permission from the visitors for sending emails. You need to think through many such sign-up forms before you optimize the email sign-ups. Every result driven email marketing agency would include this aspect in their audit report, which will let you know whether your sign-up forms are up to the mark or not. 
2. If the sole purpose of your email sign-up form is generating leads, then you should use multi-step sign-up. The reason being, you will ask the subscribers for the lead at the end of the sign-up process. However, in case of email sign-up for service or product newsletters or other types of email content, you should go for single step sign-up. Keep the form as short as possible. Ask them to fill in just the minimum details.
3. Why should people give you their personal information? It is important that you offer them value against the information they are providing you. It is all the more important that you make the proposition clear. They should know what they are signing up for and mention it at the start of the form. This way you will gain more trust and the audience will support you.
4. Most people are going to access your website on their phone. It is important that you develop a mobile friendly opt-in form, which will help them sign-up as they visit the website. Remember that people are not going to visit the website twice. So, if you want to convert them, your only option is to take the first visit as the opportunity and convert them immediately.
5. Social sign-ups are an easy way to get people to subscribe to your email and provide you with valid details. You should always allow people to use their social media channels to connect with you
6. When you have developed a form to get more sign-ups, make sure you have tested the form as well. If possible, develop two (or multiple) types of forms and conduct an A/B testing. It will help you know which form is going to be more effective and benefit you with more subscriptions. Keep track of the number of subscriptions and optimize the forms at regular intervals. 

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Form Ideas for Increasing Sign-ups

• Make your incentive visually appealing. Visitors don’t have the time to delve into your page and read through the content to know the value. If you have the right visuals, you get the details faster.
• If you have too many fill outs in the form, chances are people won’t sign up. You should ask for as minimal details as possible. In some cases, the best way to get the sign-up is by asking for one detail only to start with. Subsequently, you can ask for more details to personalize the future communications.
  

• Ask them for their preferences. For instance, not everyone is interested in all the products or services you have to offer. Let them select the type of products or services they want to get updates on and allow them to sign-up. This method definitely gains more people on-board.

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Another idea is to have a long sign-up form that asks for preferences right at the start. See an example below:​
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Note that this strategy is suitable for a few businesses only. 

• If you want people to subscribe, make sure you are hosting special giveaways for the people who are signing up. This should prove to be attractive enough to yield the sign-up.

It is important that you have the forms present on certain pages. That’s why you need to think through the pages that require optimizing.

• You should ideally have a sign-up form on the blog page, as they come there by chance, with a mindset to get some information on your products or services. You should ideally allow sign-ups through this page, as the visitor might readily take up the opportunity. Slide-in forms or form between the posts work best for the opt-in.
• The home page is the second most important part of the website that you need to optimize. Make sure the goal of the homepage is clear before you add the opt-in form to it. If your goal is to get the person to sign-up for the email newsletter, then add the opt-in to the home page. You can opt for a single step or two-step opt-in in this case. Do test the opt-in for the home page, before moving ahead with the idea.

Wrap Up
Email list is the strength for every organization dependent on email marketing services to increase their revenue. If you want to build a valid email list, you need to work on maximizing subscriptions for your emails, which is a result of well-defined sign-up forms.

The email sign-up forms should be simple, creative, nicely designed and offer value that is real and credible. If you are able to build trust through the sign-up form, then you will surely increase the subscriptions for your emails. Make sure you add preferences in the design, so that you can personalize the content for the subscribers.
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Author bio:

Chintan is Head of Operations at InboxArmy LLC. He has been into email marketing domain from last 7 years. Chintan is connected to InboxArmy, a professional email marketing agency that specializes in providing advanced email marketing services from email production to deployment. Chintan's success track record covers building email programs at competitive email marketing pricing and using data-driven strategies to turn around underperforming accounts.

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