It can be quite disheartening if you set up an optin page but only a small fraction of the visitors to the page are opting into your list. There are many reasons why this may be, and often your optin rate can be improved by making some very small simple tweaks and changes to your overall optin process.
Three simple ways you can do that are to revise the bribe that you’re offering for your prospects to opt into the list by making sure the page is kept as simple as possible, and by limiting the amount of information you’re asking for from each of your prospects.
First of all, you need to think carefully about what bribe you’re offering. It can be tempting to use a resale rights product to get subscribers to join your list. And this can work in some niches, but not all of them. And this is where testing comes in. You always need to be experimenting with different optin offers to find out which one is most appropriate for you. If you find that the optin rate isn’t as high as you want, it may be that they already have the product, or they may not see the value of it.
You can improve your optin rate by creating a different product. Often you can take a simple ebook which you have rights to and rerecord that into video. And by making this a video, rather than an ebook, you have a higher perceived value to the product. People will opt into this. You can create a video quickly. This may just be a simple screen capture video, such as a set of PowerPoint slides, and you can do this in almost real time. By making this a bribe that your prospects want, you’ll be increasing the overall optin rate to your page.
Secondly, your page might be too complex. Many studies have shown that the best way to get people to opt into a list is to have a very simple page with a minimum amount of information. You just want really to have something on your page, such as a headline, give them a quick benefit about why they should opt in. You may wish to give them a monetary reason for opting in; that they are getting a free report or video which would otherwise sell for $27, $37, or $47. This will give you a high perceived value to your product, and people are often willing to exchange an email address for this.
Don’t make your page too graphical. It may seem that graphical optin pages will increase your optin rate, but this is normally not the case. By just doing a very simple, plain page using multicolored text and a simple looking optin box which people can’t miss, then you’re likely to get more conversion to your optin page.
Finally, you should limit the amount of information you ask for from everyone. It’s quite sufficient to just ask for an email address. Most people are very happy to give an email address because you haven’t given them a request to find out their name. By just asking for an email address, people will type this in, they’ll feel fairly anonymous, and when your emails start arriving they’ll know that you haven’t got too much information on them. They will still buy from you in the future. You’ll find that just asking for an email address gets you many more subscribers than asking for a name as well.
Now, of course there’s some niches you may want to personalize it enough that asking for their name and getting a slightly reduced optin rate is fine for you. That’s a matter that needs to be considered on a niche by niche and marketer by marketer basis. But generally just asking for an email address will increase your optin rate.
So, by continually revising your optin page, you can increase your number of conversions and the percentage of people that join your mailing list. You often need to do this on a month by month basis, because you’ll be offering some kind of bribe. And a bribe that worked a couple of months ago may not be as valuable even two or three months down the line.
Make sure your page is kept fairly simple. You can experiment by changing the text on it and the exact layout of it, but generally a one screen, few line offer will convert better than having something that goes through several screens.
And finally, limit the amount of information you ask for to just an email address. Or, if you really have to, an email address and a first name. If you ask for a family name as well, this will dramatically reduce your optin rate, and you want to keep this as simple for somebody to opt in as possible.
By doing so, you’ll be maximizing the number of conversions into your optin page, and you’ll be getting these prospects who will potentially buy from you in the future.