Imagine this scenario: You’ve successfully directed a potential new member of your email marketing contact list to one of your landing pages and he or she is ready and willing to start enjoying your inbox content. The only problem? Your signup form is unintuitive, hard to complete, and visually confusing.Sounds like a nightmare scenario, right? Fortunately, it’s not too late to avert this email marketing disaster and get your contact list signup form back on track. To help you along this path, here’s a look at how best to draft and implement a user-friendly variation of this vital piece of the email outreach process.
Build Value into the Form
When it comes to creating a pleasing signup form experience, the HubSpot Blog’s Corey Wainwright points out that it’s hard to go wrong with building value into the registration process. In fact, honing in on the benefits of this commitment is arguably the most important factor in developing a winning approach to this practice.One of the most effective strategies for imparting value revolves around a bold, clear heading and a few bullet points that support the decision to join the contact list. Going a step farther, if you’re able to accomplish this goal without a ton of superfluous wording, then you’ve really hit the mark on the value side of the equation.
Focus on Minimalism
Speaking of cutting out the fluff, Wainwright also notes that the fewer fields you can get away with in your signup form, the better off your brand will be as it continues to grow its contact list. Longer forms and requests for too much information from these prospective list members can boost mid-form abandonment rates and ensure that viewers feel overwhelmed or confused.A better course of action is to keep things short and simple during the signup experience when possible. If the information isn’t something that you absolutely must have in order to properly incorporate the viewer into your email marketing database, then it shouldn’t make the cut.
Handle Privacy Concerns ASAP
Something that shouldn’t fall on the chopping block as you trim down this process is the privacy policy. As David Moth of Econsultancy explains, allaying the fears of these contact list members and guaranteeing that their information won’t be used in any illicit manner promotes a more inviting and amenable signup situation. Adding in the fact that this tactic also plays well with the precedent set by Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL) doesn’t hurt either.Naturally, your brand can’t waste time laying out every point regarding consumer privacy rights and information usage within its signup form. However, slipping in a simple hyperlink that directs these users to your privacy policies and adherence to spam-averse practices should do the trick.
Group Fields Logically
Another way to make life a little easier for your target audience as they start to funnel into your email marketing contact list is by grouping the form fields in a logical and sensible manner. It might not seem like that big of a deal at first glance, but having structure in this endeavor facilities a more expedient and efficient signup process.A good way to test the flow of your signup form is by running yourself through the experience from the perspective of a consumer. If things seem disjointed or out of order, this approach will provide you with all of the insight needed to make changes that enhance and improve the signup process.
Tether Your Signup to Social Channels
The final tip for making your signup form a little more user-friendly focuses on the ever-growing bond between email marketing and social media. More specifically, we’re talking about adding in signup buttons and other tools that allow these users to join your contact list via already active profiles on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms.While this addition definitely requires a little extra work on your end of the equation, it also provides a powerful conduit for bolstering membership numbers via the more socially-attuned portion of your target audience. The big key here is that you’ll need to leverage your consumer data and hone in on the right networks to include within this approach. However, if you’re able to pull this tactic off – and put to good use the rest of what you’ve learned here – then your brand is well on its way to crafting a signup form that is simple, effective, and capable of generating a major response from the people that matter most.
