Seriously… I meant opt-ins of course!
Opt-ins are the lifeblood of your business website. You can have the most successful website in the world, in terms of visitors reading it, but if they don’t opt-in to your mailing list you are losing the opportunity to convert those readers to clients.
We have all heard the saying ‘The money is in the list!”, right?
Well, it may be a cliche, but it’s true.
So how do you make sure you get people to opt-in?
Here are 6 top tips for increasing your opt-in rate.
1) Make sure your free offer, ethical bribe, sales’ bait (whatever you choose to call it) is something that people will actually want.
Try and think a little bit out of the box and offer something different to the usual free e-book that is just a piece of PLR (Private Label Rights) that you’ve added your name too. People are guarding their email addresses like gold dust nowadays to avoid the spam we get in our inboxes every day. You need to have something good to make them give that email address up.
2) Make your opt-in box stand out. The standard ones you get from the autoresponder services are b-o-r-i-n-g, to say the least. You see the same old red arrows on site after site. Be a little different – different is good!
I use a plugin to create opt-in boxes that I can personalize. There are many available. My personal favourites are ConvertPro and OptinMonster They create opt-ins for use in widgets, as shortcodes and the dreaded pop-up opt-ins that everyone hates but that work so well. They create optin boxes that are triggered by actions, such as leaving the page.
3) Make sure your opt-in is above the fold. The phrase ‘Above the Fold‘ is a relic from the print days and it is the upper half of the front page of a newspaper where an important news story or photograph is often located. For your website, it means the top part of the screen so that the reader doesn’t need to scroll down to see it. Now, whilst this is relevant to the blog section it’s less important for your website.
4) Don’t ask for too much information. Gather the minimum amount of information that you need. Usually, first name and email is sufficient or even email only. If you start asking for phone number, date of birth, the name of the first child, etc…. you are not likely to get anything!
If you need a phone number because you have offered to call them for a free coaching session, you can collect this information with your first follow-up email.
5) Make sure your opt-in box works. It seems obvious, doesn’t it? But you would be surprised at how many opt-in boxes fail when you enter your email because they haven’t been tested regularly. Whether you choose to have a single opt-in (no confirmation) or a double opt-in (reader confirms they opted in) is up to you but whichever way you go make sure something happens when the reader gives you his email.
6) Tell people to opt-in. Another obvious one but one that is often forgotten. You have just written an awesome piece of content for your blog and published it. Make sure to leave a way for the reader to opt-in to your list to get more of your awesome content. Include an opt-in option in your comment box or add an opt-in box at the bottom of your blog post.
Do you have any more tips for getting more? If so, I’d love to hear about them – leave me a comment below.
If you are at a complete loss on how to set up your autoresponder and get an opt-in box onto your blog, then don’t panic, I can help with that. Simply choose one of the options on our service page here >> and I will help you get started on building your list.
And just in case you’d like to opt-in for more of my content and tips here’s an opt-in box I prepared just for that purpose.
