Businesses today, need to do generate more from their resources. As a business, you need to connect with your prospects in a personalized way while spending less. And businesses that are successful in connecting with their target audience in a personalized way will be successful in generating more revenue and more return their investment.
Is there a better way to connect with your customers other than email marketing. No. And how do you keep your email subscribers growing? With a newsletter subscription form on your website. In this article, we will learn
What is a newsletter subscription form
Why is newsletter subscription required
Main components of an effective newsletter subscription
How to make a newsletter subscription box
Where to place the newsletter subscription box
What is a newsletter subscription form?
You have landed upon a website, and while you are perusing its content, a box suddenly pops up from some where. The box has an alluring offer that you find hard to give up.
To claim the offer, you need to give your name and email address.
For once, you think of letting it go. I don’t need more emails in my Inbox.
The next second, you are filling up the form. “The offer sounds tempting. I can always unsubscribe if I don’t like it”.
You have just opted in to a “newsletter subscription form”.
If you have entered the correct (no spelling mistakes) email address in the newsletter subscription box, and the email address is legitimately yours, you’ll receive a mail (from the same website), asking you to click on a link. This is called double opt in. And when you click on the link, your email address is verified and your subscription to the website’s newsletter is added to the list of other email recipients like you.
Why is newsletter subscription required?
As a business, you need more clients. The more clients you have, the more business you can expect. But then you may ask who reads email today . Everybody uses social media. Isn’t advertising on social media more productive than email marketing? Well here are the facts.
Email vs Other Online Marketing Techniques
One research reports that there are 43 different ways you can do online marketing. Search Engine Optimization, Podcasts, Social Media Marketing, Video Marketing, and the list goes on.
Many new marketing technologies have sprung up in the last few years; and many have disappeared from the scene.
But only one category has consistently performed well, year after year, and that is email marketing. Email generates the highest ROI. According to one study: for every dollar spent on Email marketing, it generates $44 in return.
Email has a much larger reach.
While Facebook boasts of having over 1 billion active users, and Twitter having 255 million, one is compelled to conclude that social media is a better option to reach the online community.
But isn’t it surprising that when you sign up for a Facebook or Twitter account you need an email address.
And how do Facebook and Twitter notify users of activity in their account? They do it through email. There are are three times more email accounts then there are are Facebook and Twitter accounts combined.
Email delivers your message
If you post a passage on Facebook how many of your contacts will have a chance of seeing it?
An official study proclaims this to be about 2%. So if you have 1,000 friends on Facebook just about 20 will see your message. Whereas if you send an email to 1,000 contact at least 950 will receive it in their inbox.
The difference is a staggering 45 times. 20 on Facebook and 950 on email.
Your email subscribers have given you their consent to receive your messages. But that is not the case for social media. Everyone just keeps posting, and a few will get to read your post.
Email gives you a higher conversion
The ultimate goal for every business is to convert its potential customers into paying customers. Social media is more of a personal form of communication; people use it to communicate with family members and friends.
But when people expect to receive information about new products and services, they want it through email. Email is an open platform. Email isn’t owned or controlled by buy one particular business house. The owners of Social Media brands device new algorithms to increase their own revenue while giving less importance to free posts.
Your subscribers are going to be your asset over a long period of time. Unlike social media following, building your your email list is a a stable long term investment that will pay off in the the years to come.
Main components of an effective newsletter subscription form
- An enchanting headline: Your headline should clearly describe the benefit to the visitor. It should be noticeable and succinct.
- A brief description: Is your description helpful, clear and to the point? Use bullet marks so that the visitor gets the message in a glance.
- Enticing visuals: Add an image of the incentive you are promising. Images of smiling human beings are a great way to entice visitors. Do not make it too loud, as it usually distracts visitors.
- 2 line form: Don’t ask for more than a first name (or name) and email address. Asking for too much information, too soon, will kill your conversions.
- A Call-to-Action subscribe button: Don’t simply write “Subscribe now”. Use text that compels the visitor to take action – Click immediately / Subscribe! (that’s why it’s called a call to action button). Use a contrasting color for this button, so that it gets noticed.
How to make a newsletter subscription box.
I will take the example of making a subscription form on ConvertKit. This is the easiest amongst all. You can do it yourself without hiring a developer.
Register on ConvertKit
Go to “Landing Pages & Forms”
Select Form
You will be asked to choose the type of subscription form. The images are self-explanatory.
Modal is a pop-up form which covers the whole screen. The modal disables the main window, while keeping it visible. I have chosen to go ahead with Modal.
The next screen asks you to choose a design/ template/ theme for your newsletter subscription form. You can choose any template that suits your product type. Then you can change the picture, or modify the background colour, or change the text, the font, font size.
Once you have finalized the design, you need to add this form on your website. Click the “Embed” button.
You will be shown various options to choose from Javascript, HTML, Share, WordPress or Unbounce (a landing page builder platform). If you have chosen WordPress, it will ask you to install the ConvertKit WordPress plugin on your WordPress website and then embed the form using the shortcode displayed.
You can download the plugin to your computer, and then install it on your WordPress website.
However, prior to that, check out the “SETTINGS” for your newsletter subscription form. You can access the settings in the same row as the “EMBED” button.
There are some very interesting settings which make your form very engaging. I used to be wonder struck when I saw such forms performing on other websites. But never knew about these tools that make these a child’s play.
You can set up this form to pop-up (trigger) when a visitor tries to leave the page (exit-intent) or when he has spent 5 seconds on your website (you can alter this timing to your needs).
Give it a try. I am sure you too will be wonder-struck.
Where to place the newsletter subscription form
A lot of research has been done by experts in the field of online marketing, and they have identified hot spots where the visitors pay more attention and you are likely to get a higher conversion for your newsletter subscription form. These are
- Your website’s header
- Scattered on your Blog Posts
- In a modal page (we examined this in the beginning of the previous section)
- Your website’s footer
- Your “About Us” page
- In the side-bar
You can experiment for yourself and place the form at various places on your website. Do not limit yourself to just one place. You can have multiple forms (of different types – modal, splash, slide-in, sticky header) and place them at all the above places on your website.