Get more email signups at your Web site

Your pay-per-click campaigns and search engine optimization are paying off big time, as traffic to your Web site jumps! Great! Now are you doing everything you can to get those site visitors to convert to email subscribers?

Below are seven best practices you can easily implement to make sure your email signups go up when your site traffic does:

1. Offer a link to your signup page on every page of your site. Notice I said “a link to,” not a signup box? That’s because offering just the signup box is arrogant. Any site that asks for your email address without any information about what you’re signing up for is assuming that they don’t have to sell you on the idea of subscribing. Your prospect’s email address is a form of currency. You wouldn’t ask him or her to buy something from you without telling her what it is.
2. So that makes the next best practice: Include a signup page. This page sells the idea of signing up. It’s a promotional page telling the prospect what they’ll get in exchange for handing over their email address to you. This page should tell them what they’ll get from you and how often. It should extol the virtues of your email, or at least tout the benefits. Your goal? For someone to consider it a no brainer to sign up.
3. Notice I haven’t yet used the word newsletter? That’s because not every company publishes an email newsletter, but it seems to be a default. Recently we took on a new client who advertised their email newsletter on their home page (good) but didn’t actually publish an email newsletter (bad). They sent out email promotions. And to be honest, that was a better fit for their younger demographic which is more likely to sign up for deals than news. So the best practice is: Name your email communications appropriately. (Here’s an email newsletter written a few years ago by one of our partners. It includes many suggestions for alternative names for your email communications: http://www.weknowwords.com/may2005.htm.)
4. Include a sample issue, and link to it from your signup page. That way people can kick the email marketing tires and know what they’re really getting when they sign up.
5. Reassure them by stating that you won’t sell or share their email address, and link to your Privacy Policy page.
6. Consider an incentive. Maybe they get an in-store coupon or free ebook if they sign up.
7. Don’t ask for too much information on the signup page. More on this in another blog post…

There you have it. Seven easy ways to optimize your email signup on your Web site, so you have more willing recipients for your email marketing!