Actions for optimizing your email opt-in process

The first thing you need to do in order to develop or optimize your opt-in process is to simply create a flowchart of your opt-in process, or as mentioned earlier, your “opt-in campaign.” Do this on a napkin, a piece of paper, or wherever you want, but just map out all of the different pieces that are going to happen in some sort of detail. Here are some important considerations:

Make your offer valuable to your opt-ins

Contrary to popular use, “Sign up for our free newsletter” is not a valuable offer. Think of how the person is going to benefit from your offer before making it.

Go to your next page-the sign-up page

Don’t ask for a lot of data fields- only ask for information you absolutely need to effectively communicate with your opt-ins. Keep your data fields to a minimum and you will get a lot more people to sign up and you won’t be overloaded with unnecessary data.

Acknowledge each person when he/she has successfully signed up

There are thousands of sites out there that, when you sign up for an email newsletter or to receive information from the company and then hit submit, you are just automatically taken back to the home page. Your opt-in doesn’t know for sure if he/she has successfully completed the fields or not. Just have a simple page that says, “Thanks, we got your information and you will be getting an email shortly that will take you to the next step.”

Craft a compelling welcome message

Develop a welcome message that really does a great job of reflecting your brand and that is delivered immediately upon sign up. You’ve got to make sure that your email gets there right away-timely delivery of that message reflects your brand.

Deliver what you promise

Make sure that your welcome message delivers on the promise you gave the opt-in at sign-up. It can reinforce what he/she has signed up for and the value of what he/she is going to receive. Your welcome message is also a great opportunity to inspire action-people open welcome messages.

Be consistent

Don’t wait for a month or two to send the first message. You’ve got to get consistency established with the first few messages that you send. And you should try to send your messages within two to three weeks consistently until you can establish a regular pattern.