If you want to grow your email list quickly, it’s important that you create a good opt-in offer that will encourage people to subscribe to your list. For example, you don’t just want a basic opt-in box that says, “Sign up for our free newsletter.” There’s too much information missing here for many people to want to sign up. What kind of newsletter will they get? How often will it come? What’s in it for them if they subscribe? Your opt-in offer should answer these questions if you want to be successful.
The way you write your opt-in offer should really connect with your target audience. You want to get visitors excited about opting into your list and give them a clear idea of the benefits of doing so.
Here are some basic rules you should keep in mind if you want to create compelling opt-in offers and grow your email list.
Rule #1: Emphasize benefits, not features.
This rule speaks to one of the most important parts of creating a good opt-in offer. You have to let people know what’s in it for them if they subscribe to your list. To do this, you should emphasize the benefits of your product or service, rather than its features.
A feature is one of the components of functions of your product or service, while a benefit is something the product or service will do for your customer to solve their problem or answer their question. You can hook visitors by telling them how they will benefit from your offer.
Rule #2: Include a strong call to action.
You can’t just say something like, “Subscribe now to our free newsletter…” You have to tell visitors specifically what you want them to do and how you want them to do it. The call to action should tell people exactly what action you want them to take. It should also create a sense of urgency to persuade visitors to act now, before leaving your site.
For example, a better call to action would be something like, “Click here now to subscribe to our free newsletter…” This call to action tells visitors exactly what you want them to do and how to do it. Don’t leave anything to chance where collecting your opt-ins is concerned.
If you want people to give you their names and email addresses, you need to tell them (“Enter your name and email address in the fields provided”). If you want people to click through to your subscription page, then you need to tell them that too (“Click here now to subscribe”).
Rule #3: Include a link to your privacy policy.
Most people are reluctant to give out their personal information to someone they’ve never met before. You can ease their fears by including a link to your privacy policy on every page of your website. This shows people you are dedicated to protecting their privacy and helps them feel safer about giving you their email address.
It may seem like a small detail, but it will make a huge difference in how many opt-ins you get because it will show that you are a reputable company. Every online business should have a privacy policy. Don’t make the mistake of cutting and pasting a privacy policy from a popular company onto your own website though, because your privacy policy needs to be specific to your business.
Your privacy policy should state specifically what information you will collect from your visitors and how you will use it. You don’t have to write one from scratch though; you can use the privacy policy generator available at http://www.the-dma.org/privacy/privacypolicygenerator.shtml.
This site will ask you specific questions about how you will collect and use visitors’ information and then generate a privacy policy for you for free. The program even writes the HTML code for you and emails it to you so you can copy and paste it onto each page of your website.
