1. Use Opt-ins
Have you ever noticed that you get more sign-ups when you use opt-ins as opposed to opt-outs? Opt-ins are much more effective at grabbing your readers’ attention and keeping it. That’s because people are much more likely to put their names on a list when they’ve been lured in with a promise of something valuable in return. On the flip side, opt-outs often fall into the dreaded spam folder where they’re silently deleted.
The takeaway from this is that you should always strive to use opt-ins wherever you can. The fewer fields you have to push on your subscribers, the better. Keep your email language friendly and natural, and you’ll find that fewer people will be lured in by the false promise of a free gift.
2. Include Additional Fields
You don’t have to limit yourself to just the name and email address in your sign up form. You can include further information about your subscribers here. This could include things such as a blog post they’ll appreciate more, a link to a product they might be interested in, or a coupon code they can use to get a good price on something or another. Whatever the case, including more information is always a good idea.
3. Display Your Button
You can put a live, interactive element in your sign up form by including a subscribe button that leads to your mailing list. This ensures that your readers can subscribe without leaving the page. Plus, you have the potential for an additional conversion touchpoint if they end up clicking the button independently of what led them there in the first place.
4. Test Your Form In A Back Office
Even the best-designed sign up forms can be undermined by poor testing and hidden requirements or limitations. To protect myself as a business owner, I like to test my forms in a back office before making them live on a site or app. This allows me to identify any flaws and ensure that everything functions as intended. When you’re testing in a back office, you can utilize all the functionality of the platform and do all the things you can in advance to ensure the best possible experience for your users.
5. Add Extra Fields For Gravatar
Gravatar is an incredibly useful tool for connecting your email with your social media accounts. When you sign up for a new account with them, they’ll ask you for a bunch of information about yourself. You can opt out of the survey, but in doing so, you’ll lose out on the benefits of having your own gravatar.
You can include your website, Twitter, and Facebook accounts in your Gravatar profile. This makes it easy for people to find you across multiple platforms. You can even add additional platforms or domains to your profile. The point is that you can use this feature to effectively put a face and voice behind your email.
6. Add Captcha
Google reCAPTCHA proves that not all protective measures are a bad thing. When you use the reCAPTCHA on your sign up form, it’ll ask your visitors to enter the letters that appear in the image in the field below. That’s all there is to it. You don’t have to use reCAPTCHA to get verified mailings because you can use a free anti-spam plugin similar to Google’s reCAPTCHA to accomplish the same thing.
7. Include A Submit Button
Instead of just having an opt-in form with no way for the visitor to get what they signed up for, you can give them the option to immediately begin receiving these valuable emails by adding a submit button. When you have a submit button next to an opt-in button, it provides an additional way for your readers to get what they came for. This is especially useful if you have a bit of a waiting list for your product or service as it gives them the chance to try out your product before the rest of the world does.
8. Design The Sign Up Form In An Up-to-Date Fashion
If possible, you should design your sign up form to look like it belongs in the year 2018. This ensures that it’ll match the current design trends and be more engaging to readers. People love when they feel like they’re engaging with something that’s up to date on trends.
9. Use A Form That Works Well On All Phones
Even though mobile technology is getting more advanced all the time, not all websites and their corresponding forms are made equal. Some forms look great on a tiny phone screen while others don’t fare so well. As a consumer, this is frustrating because I enjoy using apps and websites that are optimized for mobile devices. To avoid this pitfall, make sure that your form looks good on all phones. This means testing it on all the popular mobile devices and ensuring that it looks good and functions well on all of them. Optimizing for mobile means using mobile-friendly designs, small fonts, and short videos as opposed to huge banners and visually heavy text.
10. Include Multiple Ways To Get What They Came For
Last but not least, you should always have more than one way for your readers to get what they came for. Sometimes, an email sign up can be the only way for a visitor to get in touch, but for other cases, you can also offer a limited-time discount, a free gift, or a chance to win something. Having more than one way to get in touch with your readers means you can retain more of them and draw more people to your cause. In Conclusion
Hopefully, this post gave you some great ideas on how to make your AWeber sign up forms work harder. Always use a form that’s been tested in a back office, include all the fields you need, and make sure that you have multiple ways for your readers to get what they came for. Designing a sign up form takes a bit of time and it’s worth it in the end because it’ll make your interactions with your subscribers more enjoyable.