• The three things a newsletter landing page must do to be successful
• How to build a newsletter landing page, from planning to publication

When you’re finished reading, you’ll have all of the tools you need to start building a landing page for your newsletter.

Three keys to a successful newsletter landing page

A good newsletter landing page does three things:

1. Limit distractions

Your landing page should make it easy to subscribe to your newsletter and more difficult to do anything else. To accomplish this, many landing pages either minimize the site’s navigation menu or do away with it altogether, like the IT Showcase landing page shown below.

2. Explain your offer

A newsletter landing page should tell visitors what to expect when they sign up for your newsletter. This can be done through a combination of clear, direct copywriting and images of your newsletter or opt-in bonus.

3. Encourage action

Your newsletter landing page should make your signup form and/or subscribe button highly visible. The form itself should also be easy to use, with a minimal amount of required information. Visitors are more likely to take action when the steps to do so are readily apparent.

How to make a newsletter landing page with WordPress

Planning your newsletter landing page

To create an effective newsletter landing page, you’ll first need to get clear on what that landing page is supposed to do.

1. Get specific about your goals

The goal of a newsletter landing page is obviously to gain subscribers. If you want to be able to measure and improve upon your success, however, you’ll need to get more specific with that goal.

There are three types of goals you’ll need to set for your newsletter landing page:

• Visitor number. This is the number of visitors you hope to bring to your landing page.
• Subscription rate. This is the percentage of visitors you hope to turn into subscribers.
• Number of subscribers. This is the exact number of subscribers who sign up using the form on your landing page. For example, if you’re creating a limited-time landing page for a specific campaign, you might aim for 300 subscribers to sign up during the campaign.

The main thing to remember when setting these goals is that your goal number of subscribers should be relative to the number of people expected to see the page. For example, if you only expect 1,000 people to view your newsletter landing page in a given month, aiming for 800 subscribers per month sets you up to fail. In this case, a better number to aim for is 100 subscribers per month. At 10% of the visitor rate, this is still an ambitious goal, but it is possible for many brands.

2. Get clear about what you’re offering

The next thing you need to establish is what value you’ll be providing to subscribers who sign up through this landing page. There are a couple of things to consider here:

• Your regular newsletter content. What types of emails can people expect to receive from you? Sneak peeks at future products? Educational content? Opportunities to influence your future products or services?
• Your opt-in bonus. Is there a special gift users get when they sign up? If so, how does this gift benefit your visitors?

Knowing this up front will help you with the next two steps.

Creating your copy

The next step in how to create a newsletter landing page with WordPress is to write the text, or copy, for it.

3. Use copywriting techniques to create your landing page text

Copywriting is a type of writing that convinces users to take a specific action, typically a signup or a sale. There are several copywriting techniques you can use to create effective text for your landing page:

• Address visitors directly. Use the word “you” to directly engage with visitors. This also helps you create a conversational tone in your text.
• Emphasize the benefits people get for signing up. Will they get access to exclusive discounts? Educational or inspirational content? Opportunities to influence your brand? Tell them about it!
• Use urgent language. Words like “hurry” and “now”, as well as phrases like “don’t miss out”, encourage your visitors to take action right away.
• Don’t be afraid to break a few grammar rules. You’re creating a conversation between your brand and your visitors, not an academic paper. Your writing should reflect that, even if it means breaking a few rules.
• Create a highly specific call to action. Use a call to action that tells your visitors exactly what you want them to do, like “Sign up now”.

Most of all, don’t just use the first text that comes to mind. Play around with the wording of your original text, write a few alternate options, ask for input from your team if you have one. More often than not, you’ll find something better along the way.

4. Write a short, self-contained message to go “above the fold”

Make sure your first pitch, including the call to action, is short enough that you can display it in large text and still have it completely visible to users when the page loads. This encourages users to make quick decisions and reduces clutter on the screen.

In fact, many landing pages only include one or two sentences of text in the first area, like the landing page for i done this:

5. Consider writing a longer pitch to go “below the fold”

One common landing page strategy for winning over hesitant visitors is to use each successive screen to expand on what you’re offering visitors. The first area of the page contains a 2-3 sentence pitch and a call to action, followed by an area with 2-3 paragraphs explaining different aspects of your offer. Product/service landing pages often also have areas explaining different aspects of how their product works, but a newsletter can usually be fully explained in two panels.

Designing your page

Now that you’ve created your landing page copy, it’s time to learn how to create a newsletter landing page with WordPress.

6. Choose your color scheme

In most cases, a landing page should use your existing brand colors. However, you still need to figure out where these colors will be used. What color will be used in your header? What color do you want your landing page copy to be? What color can you use to make your call to action stand out from other content on the page?

You also want to remember that black and white can be used to great effect. Consider, for example, this landing page for Aesop Wines:

This page uses black and white to create contrast, with only a splash of color. You can go the other way, though, using colorful illustrations and only using black and white for your call to action.

7. Design your signup form

The final thing you’ll want to do before you start building your landing page is to create a unique signup form for it. This will make it easier to track how many people are actually signing up for your landing page. It’s also an opportunity to create something that really fits with your landing page.

As a MailPoet user, you can do this by going to MailPoet – Forms – Add New. This takes you to the signup form template library. There are templates available for every type of signup form. You can also choose to start with a blank form. Either way, since you’re working on a newsletter landing page, you’ll want to choose an embedded form that can be placed front and center on your page.

Next, you’ll be sent to the MailPoet form editor. This is where you can edit several aspects of your form:

• What list this form is for. You will need to specify this even if you only have one list.
• Where subscribers are sent. You can choose to either give new subscribers a simple thank-you message or to send them to a custom thank-you page.
• Background image. You can add a custom background image to your form.
• Background color. You can choose any color you want for the background of your form, including several color gradiant options.
• Font and message colors. You can also choose colors for the font, success message, and error messages.
• Required information. You can add information fields for first and last names. To find these blocks, press the blue “+” in the top left corner of the screen, then scroll down the block menu to the “Fields” area. You’ll note that MailPoet also lets you create custom information fields.
• Additional content. The MailPoet form editor lets you add most existing WordPress blocks to your signup form. This means you can add a header, regular text, or images to make your form more appealing.

When you’re happy with your form, click ‘Save’. The form will now be accessible through the MailPoet Subscription Form block in the WordPress block editor.

8. Choose a sidebar layout

It’s time to start making your page! Before adding any content, however, you’ll want to scroll to the bottom of the sidebar and choose a sidebar layout. Specifically, you’ll want to choose a layout with no sidebar in order to minimize distractions.

9. Optional: hide the menu and title

If you really want to minimize distractions, you can also hide the navigation menu. This will require minimal use of code, but the process is pretty simple:

• Open the page you want to work on in the WordPress editor.
• Grab the page ID from the address bar; this appears as “post=number”.
• In your CSS editor or the Simple Custom CSS plugin, enter the page ID and the CSS attribute, then use the code display:none. When you’re done, it should look something like this:

.page-id-101 nav#no-header-top-menu { display: none; }

Hiding the title is a similar process. Grab your page id and combine it with the following code:

.page-id-101 .entry-title {
display: none;
}

10. Add your content

With the basics of your page set up, the next step in how to create a newsletter landing page with WordPress is to add your text and any associated images. You can do this the same way you would add content to any other WordPress page: click on the page in the spot where you want to add a block, press the blue “+” button, and choose a block from the menu that appears.

As you add your content, keep some best practices in mind:

• Your signup form should be displayed above the fold
• Each screen of your landing page should include a unique call to action
• Use directional cues, like arrows or photos with people looking in a specific direction, to guide people’s eyes to your signup form and/or other calls to action
• Use contrasting colors to make your call to action highly visible
• Make sure all of your images are optimized to ensure fast loading speed
• Limit the amount of images and information on any given screen, giving users time and space to digest all of the information available
• Consider adding a slide-in form that appears when people scroll down the page

Most of all, take the time to design something you’re proud of. Your newsletter landing page will often be the first part of your site seen by new visitors. Make it something they’ll remember.

11. Optional: do A/B testing on your newsletter landing page

If you want to take your landing page to the next level, consider A/B testing. This type of testing involves running two or more slight variations of a landing page at the same time to determine which option receives the highest conversion rate. There are several A/B testing plugins you can use to run these tests directly on your WordPress site.

Final advice

Feeling intimidated by all of this advice on how to create a newsletter landing page with WordPress? Here are a few simple steps you can take to get started:

• Determine the goal of your landing page
• List every benefit subscribers get from your newsletter, including any opt-in bonuses
• Draft a one-paragraph pitch for your newsletter

And remember to save this article so you can come back to it when you’re ready for the next steps!

A landing page is a web page where all of the content is created with the goal of getting visitors to take a specific action, such as making a specific purchase. In the case of newsletter landing pages, also sometimes referred to as squeeze pages, the goal is to get visitors to sign up for your email newsletter. 

Landing pages take longer to create than your average signup form, but they’re worth the time: they offer a signup rate of 23%. This is significantly more than the next highest signup rate of 10% for “Wheel of Fortune” forms.

Your landing page doesn’t have to be complicated either. A single screen with a high-quality image, some text describing your newsletter, and a signup form is all you really need, as demonstrated by the Dreamforce 2019 landing page:

You can create landing pages in the regular WordPress editor or by using a specialized landing page tool.

Best practices for newsletter landing pages

1. Get specific about your goals

The first thing you’ll need to do is establish goals that can actually be measured for your newsletter landing page. These should include a) how many visitors you want the landing page to get each day and b) what percentage of those visitors you want to turn into subscribers. For example, you might set a goal of 500 views/day with a 20% subscription rate. 

So, how do you choose your goal numbers?

First, let’s talk about your visitor goal. This is the harder number to determine, because there are numerous factors that impact it. For example, if you’re turning your home page into a landing page you may expect it to receive a lot of views, since anyone looking up your site will be directed to it. On the other hand, if your site usually has low traffic levels, your homepage might get fewer visitors than a landing page tied to a major marketing campaign.

This means that you need to consider how many visitors your site usually gets, the success of previous marketing campaigns, and how you plan to market this landing page. You can then create a goal that is challenging yet possible to attain for a business with your current audience/traffic levels and resources. Personally, I like to create a number I think is reasonable, then bump it up 20% to give myself a challenge.

Next, let’s talk about your goal subscription rate. The temptation here is to base your goal on the average rate for your industry, but it’s important to remember that many landing pages don’t even follow basic rules of modern web design; as many as half of existing landing pages aren’t even optimized for mobile, and the average landing page conversion rate across industries is still 9.7%. Since you’ll be working with responsive design tools like the WordPress editor and/or specialty landing page builders, you can assume your subscriber rate will be significantly higher; a subscriber rate of 20% or even 30% might be a reasonable goal, especially if you have a high-quality signup bonus.

2. Write persuasive copy

The text of your landing page needs to make a compelling argument to win over visitors who might not be sure about your newsletter. 

You can use several strategies to achieve this with your copy:

• Focus on the benefits your newsletter provides. People know that their email address is valuable to you. What you need to do is establish that your newsletter is also valuable to them. For example, you might focus on the opportunity to access subscriber-only discounts. 
• Establish your expertise. Show people that you can be trusted by sharing the story of how you started your business, your professional credentials, or the number of years you’ve been in business. Case studies that show how you’ve helped people or businesses in the past can also act as proof of expertise and social proof (we’ll talk more about social proof later).
• Get specific with your calls to action. Your calls to action should use specific language like “Sign up” or “Join the club”. You may also want to create and include a branded name for your subscribers, like KJ Harrowick has done for her fan club, Hàlön Crew:

• Use simple language. It’s important to remember that the average person in the US reads at an eighth grade level. This means that most of the time, simpler language is better. After all, if a person is confused about what you’re offering, they’re probably not going to sign up. However, you also need to remember your audience. If they’re used to more advanced language from your brand or brands like yours, you’ll want to stick with that language.
• Keep your paragraphs short. Short paragraphs are easier to read on the screen and allow for more white space. 

You should also run your copy through at least one round of edits, looking for ways to tighten the text and also eliminating any spelling or grammar errors.

3. Make your calls to action highly visible

There are two aspects to this. First, your newsletter landing page should have a call to action (CTA) above the fold (content visible before you scroll down) and another one on every screen. This allows your visitor to stop reading and take action at any point as they scroll through your page.

Second, the visual design of your page should make the call to action highly visible. The easiest ways to do this are by putting your CTA in a button and using contrasting colors. For example, if the background of your page is white, you might add a black CTA button with white text. 

You can take this a step further by using directional elements to guide the viewer’s gaze to the call to action. For example, you might have a photograph of a person whose face is pointed toward your signup form. 

4. Display social proof

Social proof is anything that shows that your business has helped people in the past. This can be as simple as a headline on your site declaring that you’ve had 2,000 satisfied customers or as complex as a video testimonial from a past client. You might even want to use both of these strategies, placing a short line about the number of people you’ve helped above the fold and a series of reviews below it.

There are a couple of strategies you can use to maximize the effect of your social proof:

• Use excerpts instead of full reviews. Pull the most complimentary or informative quotes from a review and leave the rest.
• Get permission to use photos. Photos establish that your testimonials were created by real people. 

If you don’t currently have any reviews or testimonials, check out our guide on how to ask for feedback via email.

5. Use large, high quality images

The visual aspects of your landing page are just as important as the text. This makes it important to use only your highest quality photos and illustrations. You also want to make sure that these images appear in a large enough format for the details to be clear.

However, you don’t want the actual file size of your images to be large, as this can slow down your landing page. To remedy this, run any images you’re planning to use through a free file compressor like TinyPNG.

6. Add a video

If you’ve spent any time at all in the digital marketing world, you’ve probably heard that video is the next big thing. And it’s true for landing pages too: embedded video content can increase conversions by as much as 86%. 

The type of video you publish on your newsletter landing page will vary based on what you’re offering. Here are a few examples:

• If you have an opt-in bonus, you can create a video explaining how users can benefit from it. 
• If your newsletter offers weekly business tips, you can create a video of yourself reading tips from past newsletters.
• If your newsletter features updates on your creative work, you can create a video sharing how you got into this type of creative work in the first place.

And of course, you can also add video testimonials related to your opt-in bonus or newsletter.

7. Eliminate distractions

Everything on your newsletter landing page should be focused on getting people to subscribe. In many cases, companies don’t even put navigation menus on landing pages. Others move the navigation bar to the bottom of the page so that people only find it if they’re actively looking for it.

The main exception to this is if you’re using your homepage as a newsletter landing page. Since your homepage is the main hub of your site, you want to leave navigation intact for visitors trying to find specific information.

8. Use the testing tools available to you

If you’re using one of the landing page tools I mentioned earlier, make sure you take advantage of the testing tools you have access to. These tools let you test content before you send out a major marketing campaign, allowing you to refine your landing page before publishing it.

If you’ve never run these kinds of tests before, check out the VWO guide to A/B testing. 

9. Check your analytics regularly

The best landing pages are the ones that are refined over time, with changes made based on real data. This means making a regular appointment with yourself to go through your analytics, watching for trends. 

Here are some things to look at:

• How many people visit your landing page per day/week/month. This can tell you if your marketing campaigns are actually driving traffic to your landing page. If your visitor numbers are low, you’ll need to reevaluate your overall newsletter marketing strategy.
• Where visitors come from. This tells you what your most effective marketing channels are most effective, what platforms you can improve your marketing on, and what platforms are performing so poorly that you may want to stop using them altogether.
• How much time people spend on your page. If people are only spending a few seconds on your landing page, it might indicate that you’re failing to meet user expectations or that something on the page is broken.
• Subscriber rate. If you’re using a landing page builder like Unbounce, you’ll be able to toggle conversion rate tracking for this. Otherwise, you’ll need to rely on the analytics for the signup forms used and/or linked to on your newsletter landing page.
• What CTA drives the most conversions. You can figure this out either by looking at the most-clicked links on a given page or by tracking the stats of specific signup forms. In most cases, this will be the first one because it’s the most visible. If a different call to action gets more attention, it may mean that your original CTA isn’t compelling enough. 

As for how often you should look at these statistics, it depends on your goals. If the landing page is part of a short-term marketing campaign, you might want to look at your analytics weekly or even daily, giving yourself the ability to pivot quickly if your campaign is tanking. 

On the other hand, if you’re turning your homepage into a landing page, you might only want to check your analytics once a month or even once every three months. Really, the key is to check often enough that you can address the cause of any sudden dips in traffic before you start losing money.

10. Make multiple landing pages

I’m always talking about the importance of personalization in email marketing, and it can be used here too. Specifically, you can create different landing pages for people who are introduced to your content in different ways. For example, you might have personalized newsletter landing pages for the following groups:

• People who come to your landing page from social media
• Users who reach your landing page by searching for specific keywords
• People who clicked on specific advertising campaigns
• Users referred to your landing page by a member of your audience

You don’t need to reinvent your landing page completely for each group either. Instead, you can create a duplicate of your initial landing page, then change a few words or images to better suit the audience this page is for. For example, if you’re personalizing the landing page for someone who looked up a specific keyword, you might make sure that keyword appears more often than it does on the regular page.

Newsletter landing page examples

Publisher Weekly

The Publisher Weekly landing page is simple, without any imagery, animations, or other complex elements. Instead, it uses a couple of lines of text to explain what visitors get when they subscribe to the newsletter.

If that isn’t quite enough of you, Publisher Weekly offers two forms of social proof: the logos of professional organizations that rely on this newsletter and a line about joining their 2,000+ subscribers. This establishes that Publisher Weekly is a reputable source.

Overthink

There are a few reasons to love this newsletter landing page:

• Simple, clean design with minimal distractions
• Copy that spells out exactly what subscribers can expect
• Highly specific call to action
• An image of what the newsletter will look like when people open it on their phones, complete with a headline and article you might find in the newsletter

All in all, it’s one of the best newsletter landing pages I’ve seen, and it proves that you don’t need to put in a lot of work to create an effective landing page.

Close

This newsletter landing page centers an opt-in bonus instead of the newsletter itself. The cover image is eye catching and the hand shapes direct the action to the page’s headline. The text goes on to explain exactly what subscribers will get, reinforcing this idea with the “Download Now” CTA. Personally, I might have added a line about what subscribers can expect from the newsletter in the long run, but this page is already quite effective.

Newsletter landing page tools

There are several specialized tools for creating effective newsletter landing pages. These often use a block system similar to the WordPress block editor, but offer additional tools like A/B testing and conversion tracking.

Here’s a quick run-down of three of the most popular newsletter landing page tools:

1. WP ProfitBuilder

Standout features

• Over 100 landing page templates designed for specific purposes like lead generation and sales
• Drag and drop builder
• Fast loading pages
• A/B testing
• Funnel builder and analytics
• Conversion tracking

Overview

WP ProfitBuilder is a WordPress plugin with a flexible page builder, a growing library of page templates optimized for lead generation, and A/B testing capabilities.

As a WordPress plugin, WP ProfitBuilder is also directly compatible with MailPoet signup forms. This allows you to skip the use of third-party tools like OptInMonster.

Cost

You can buy a license for WP ProfitBuilder for a one time payment of $47 (usually $197). If you have multiple sites, you can buy a $67 (usually $297) license that works on up to 10 sites or a $67.67 (usually $497) license for 50 sites.

2. Instapage

Standout features

• Unlimited landing pages
• Unlimited conversions
• Template library with over 500 layouts
• Unique conversion tracking system
• Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)
• InstaBlocks 
• A/B testing
• Multivariate testing
• Real-time visual collaboration
• Option to work with Instapage experts to optimize your landing page
• Advanced analytics
• AdMap for connecting individual landing pages to specific ads

These features are included with the Building plan. Check out the pricing page for more details.

Overview

Instapage is an advanced landing page builder that uses InstaBlocks, a design system similar to the WordPress block editor. This makes it remarkably easy for experienced WordPress users to make landing pages with Instapage. They can then publish their newsletter landing pages directly to WordPress.

Unfortunately, Instapage doesn’t integrate directly with MailPoet. If you want to display an opt-in form on an Instapage landing page, you’ll need to use a third-party form builder that integrates with both MailPoet and Instapage, such as OptInMonster.

Cost

The basic plan of Instapage costs $199/month ($2388/year). when purchased annually. Instapage also offers custom plans; you can find more about these on the Instapage pricing page.

3. Unbounce

Standout features

• Unlimited landing pages, pop ups, and sticky bars
• Access to both the classic drag and drop builder and the new Smart Builder
• Conversion tracking
• Conversion mapping
• Unlimited client sub-accounts

Overview

Unbounce gives users access to a variety of AI-powered tools that make it easier to both create a successful landing page and refine that landing page over time. The company recently unveiled the Smart Builder, an upgraded landing page builder with several new features, including an AI-powered Design Assistant.

The downside of Unbounce is that it doesn’t integrate directly with the WordPress block editor, so you can’t paste MailPoet forms directly onto landing pages built with this tool. To put forms directly on an Unbounce landing page, you’ll need to use a tool like OptInMonster that integrates with both MailPoet and Unbounce.

Cost

The Launch plan from Unbounce costs $81/month ($972/year) when purchased annually and allows for up to 500 conversions. Plans go up to $225/month.

Final advice on building your newsletter landing page

Landing pages are incredibly powerful marketing tools that can be created for anything: a product, a service, an event, and of course, your newsletter. You can use a tool like Instapage or Unbounce to create a newsletter landing page, but all you really need is WordPress and some best principles:

• Get specific about your goals
• Write persuasive copy
• Make your calls to action highly visible
• Add social proof, especially if you have visual social proof
• Use large, high quality images
• Add a video
• Eliminate distractions
• Use any testing tools you have access to
• Check your analytics regularly, using the data to refine your landing page over time
• Create multiple landing pages

Most of all, remember that a landing page doesn’t have to be complicated. In fact, many of the best newsletter landing pages are quite simple. Yours can be too.

We’ll discuss:

• Where to place your newsletter signup form
• Types of signup forms + how to create them in MailPoet
• What makes effective signup form copy
• How to create a compelling call to action

And more! 

By the time you’re finished reading, you’ll have all of the knowledge you need to create effective newsletter signup forms.

1. Choose a strategic location for your newsletter signup form

Many business owners place a signup form somewhere in their sidebar and leave it there, giving no real thought to form placement. This is better than having no signup form at all, but you can drive more conversions with strategic placement. Even making sure that your signup form is at the top of your sidebar, rather than placing it haphazardly into the middle of the sidebar, can make a difference.

To encourage more subscriptions, consider placing an additional signup form in one or more of the following places:

• Directly under your top menu
• At the end of each blog post
• In your footer
• In a slide-in form (more on those later) at the bottom of the page

This ensures that your visitors encounter your signup forms consistently as they explore your site and read your content.

2. Use multiple types of forms

You’ll notice pretty quickly that your usual newsletter signup form doesn’t look good in every location. Sometimes all you need to do is change the dimensions, but often you’ll need to create a wholly different type of form.

Here’s a quick rundown of popular types of signup forms:

• Embedded forms. These forms are designed to be embedded directly into your content. You can use these forms in your sidebar, the header or footer of your site, and at the end of long-form content pages. 
• Fixed bar forms. Also known as floating bar forms, these are signup forms in a bar across the top of your page. These forms follow your visitor as they scroll down the page, so they can subscribe to your newsletter at any point.
• Pop-up forms. Perhaps the most infamous signup forms, these forms open over the page you’re looking at. Many people consider these forms intrusive, since they block the primary content from view. On the other hand, this level of visibility means that people can’t escape it. Plus, you can set it up so that your pop-up form appears after users have read your content.
• Slide-in forms. These signup forms slide into view as a user scrolls down the page. Typically the first view of the form is a tab that appears on the bottom or side of the page asking users to click for more. When users click on this tab, the full form appears. These are a great compromise between embedded forms and pop-up forms, since they follow users through the page without obstructing content.

Take a look at our ultimate guide on how to use pop-ups, slide-ins, fixed bar forms, and more!

3. Use time delay and exit-intent technology when possible

One of the biggest advantages of modern pop up and slide-in forms is that you can set them up to display after users have interacted with your content. There are a couple of ways to do this:

• Time delay. This feature allows you to specify how long a person must be on your page for this form to appear. Typically this is expressed as a number of seconds. In MailPoet, time delays can be added to both pop-up and slide-in forms.
• Exit-intent. When this setting is enabled, your newsletter signup will appear when someone attempts to leave a page. In MailPoet, this setting currently only exists for pop-up forms.

As a MailPoet user, you can customize these settings in the sidebar of the form builder. For more detail on how to use exit-intent forms effectively and how to set them up in WordPress, take a look at our guide.

4. Write compelling copy

There isn’t a lot of space for text in more signup forms, which means you’ll need to convince visitors to subscribe with one or two sentences. Some forms, like fixed bar forms, might only have space for a few words. 

There are several strategies you can use to write compelling signup form copy:

• Set clear expectations. Tell viewers exactly what they’ll get when they sign up for your newsletter. 
• Create a sense of exclusivity. Focus on the content your subscribers will get that can’t be found anywhere else, even on your website. This shows visitors that your newsletter is a unique and valuable experience.
• Be clear about how you’ll use data. Specifically, explain that you won’t spam the person or share their data with anyone else.
• Use your brand voice. The copy on your signup form should feel like part of your overall brand experience. For example, if most of your content is light and humorous, you might add a joke to your signup form copy.
• Emphasize your opt-in bonus. If you have a signup bonus like a discount or free content, you want to tell visitors about it here. 

Most of all, don’t just go with the first thing you think of. Draft a variety of pitches for your signup form, choose the best one, and edit it until it sparkles. If you have employees, you may also want to ask them for feedback.

5. Use a specific call to action

A generic call to action like “sign up” or “join now” gets the message across, but you can make your signup form even more effective by mentioning exactly what users will get. 

Here are some examples of more specific calls to action:

• Join my fan club
• Grab your free book
• Claim your discount
• Start learning

All of these calls to action provide a specific impression of why people are signing up for your newsletter, whether it’s an affinity for your work or the desire to grab a discount. And these are just what I thought up in a couple of minutes. Your deep understanding of your brand can help you create an even more specific call to action. For example, if your fans have a nickname like “greencoats”, you might use the call to action “Become a greencoat”.

6. Make your newsletter signup form easy to use

Your signup form should provide a clear path to joining your newsletter, not put obstacles in visitors’ way. 

There are a few ways to make sure your signup form is easy to use:

• Only ask for information you actually need. Your signup form should only require people to enter their email addresses and possibly their names. Other information about your audience can be discovered through a combination of analytics and surveys. 
• Make the signup button clearly visible. The signup button should be fairly large and use contrasting colors to make it “pop” off of the screen. 
• Make sure it’s mobile responsive. If your form doesn’t work well on mobile devices, you could be missing out on a chance to convert more than half of your visitors. Luckily, MailPoet signup form templates are already responsive!

You may also want to look into the basics of accessible web design to make your signup form (and other content) accessible to a wider range of people.

7. Create an opt-in bonus

An opt-in bonus or signup bonus is a reward given to subscribers when they sign up for your newsletter, such as a discount. These bonuses can then be used as the focal point for lead generation campaigns.

Your signup bonus can be anything that’s both relevant to your business and beneficial to your customers. Some common opt-in bonuses are discounts, short ebooks, and exclusive video or email courses. Personally, I suggest choosing a signup bonus that you don’t have to put a lot of up-front work into, like a discount or access to an expanded version of a blog post you’ve already written.

Once you’ve created your opt-in bonus, you can rewrite all of your marketing content, including the text of your signup form, to emphasize the signup bonus. You can also create a new landing page that focuses on your signup bonus. For more information on how to use these, take a look at our guide.

Time-limited signup bonuses

A great way to get a large number of subscribers to your newsletter is to offer an opt-in bonus with a time limit, such as entry into a competition or a limited-time discount. This creates a sense of urgency, encouraging users to sign up right away so they can get the full benefits.

8. Incorporate social proof

Social proof is anything that shows that people have interacted with and enjoyed your content. Most often when I talk about social proof, I’m referring to reviews, testimonials, and social media posts about your brand, but there are other ways to demonstrate social proof. For example, you might display the number of people already subscribed to your newsletter.

If you do decide to add a testimonial or review to your opt-in form, you’ll want to keep a few guidelines in mind:

• Use social proof that talks specifically about subscriber benefits. For example, if you offer an ebook as an opt-in bonus, you might choose a testimonial that talks about the benefits of that ebook.
• Keep it short. Even in a pop-up or slide-in form, you only have space for 1-2 sentences. This might mean taking an excerpt from a testimonial instead of using the whole thing.
• Weave it into your copy. Since there isn’t a lot of room, you want to make sure your copy flows smoothly into your testimonial. In some instances, the testimonial can even serve as the copy.
• Include a picture. If you have a photo of the person who gave you the testimonial, use it. This reinforces the idea that your review came from a real person.

If you don’t have any reviews or testimonials yet, check out our guide to asking for customer feedback by email.

9. Make it pretty

Your signup form should draw the eye and contribute to the visual experience of your site. There are a few things you can do to accomplish this while building your signup form:

• Incorporate your brand colors and imagery.
• Add an animation; our eyes are naturally attracted to movement.
• Use a font that emphasizes legibility; handwriting-style fonts are pretty, but they can be difficult to read.
• Make sure the font is large enough to be seen properly by visually impaired users and on small screens.
• Test what your signup form looks like on different devices. You can use a free tool like Responsinator to see what your form, and your website as a whole, will look like on various devices.

For more information on designing your signup forms, check out our guide to creating mobile-friendly signup forms.

Final thoughts

Throwing a signup form into your sidebar and calling it a day is better than not having a signup form at all, but there are a lot of ways you can optimize that form to drive more conversions:

• Place multiple forms in strategic locations on your site
• Use a variety of form types, being sure to take of specialized features like the ability to set a time delay
• Refine your copy with a goal of explaining the benefits subscribers will get in as few words as possible
• Create a specific call to action
• Make sure your forms are easy to use
• Offer some kind of opt-in bonus
• Feature a testimonial, ideally related to the newsletter itself or to your opt-in bonus
• Use your brand colors and imagery to make your signup form feel like part of the experience of your site

With these rules in mind, you’ll find yourself getting more subscribers in no time!

• What express consent is
• Why express consent is so important in email marketing
• What counts as proof of consent
• How to ensure consent 
• How to retain consent when switching to MailPoet from another email marketing service

Let’s dive right into it!

What is express consent?

Express consent is given when a person actively agrees to do or receive something. In the case of email marketing, this most often occurs when someone signs up through one of your online signup forms. You might also have people opt-in by writing their information on physical sign up sheets at in-person event.

In both of these instances, the person has physically agreed to be on your list, and you retain proof of consent.

Why is express consent so important in email marketing?

There are several reasons to get express consent before adding someone to your list, but the most important is to stay compliant with the law. Many countries have anti-spam legislation requiring proof of consent for email lists; the most notable of these is the GDPR. Breaking these laws can lead to hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines.

Legitimate email marketing services, including MailPoet, also require users to consent to become part of your list. If an email marketing service discovers that you’re using emails without consent from the user, they will shut down your list. If you don’t have proof of consent, don’t put an email on your list.

Consent is important from a purely marketing standpoint too. You’ll get the best results if you reach out to people who are actively interested in your content. Sending to users who haven’t opted into your list will also get you marked as spam more often, which means your emails won’t even reach people’s inboxes.

What counts as proof of consent?

To put someone on your list, you must have viable proof of consent. This is a document that contains the following information:

• Who consented: this can be conveyed through their name, username, session ID, or even by the email address itself.
• When they consented: signup forms provided by popular email marketing and lead generation tools automatically track when each person signs up. If you use paper forms, you’ll need to date them at the top and/or take time-stamped photos of them. 
• What they agreed to: the consent statement on the form they signed up with. You’ll also want to have separate copies of any relevant privacy policies/statements.
• How they consented: a copy of the relevant signup form, with the appropriate timestamp. 

This information is automatically recorded by MailPoet when you use one of our signup forms. If you use physical signup forms, you’ll need to scan these and/or take photos of a timestamp. In some instances, your email service provider may ask for this information.

How to ensure consent

Now that you understand the importance of express consent in email marketing, let’s talk about some best practices for getting consent:

• Be specific about what people are signing up for. Explain what users can expect to receive, including email frequency and any opt-in bonuses.
• Get clear about what information you’re gathering and why. Tell users exactly what their information will be used for. 
• Be clear about the person or organization asking for consent. Make sure the name of your brand is included in your signup forms. To meet anti-spam laws, you must also include an address in all email communications. If you run a home-based business and are concerned about privacy, you’ll need to rent a PO box for this purpose.
• Use language that is easy to understand. In the US, the average reading level is 7th-8th grade. In the UK, 12 million people only have the literacy skills of someone leaving primary school. If you want to make sure that the average person is able to understand what they’re agreeing to, you need to use simple language.

• Never have auto-filled checkboxes. Your subscribers should manually provide consent for anything related to email marketing.
• Remember that subscribers have the right to revoke consent at any time. Furthermore, you need to make it easy for people to unsubscribe at any time. This means including an easy-to-see unsubscribe link at the bottom of every email. Most email marketing tools, including MailPoet, will automatically add this information to the footer of your emails.
• Have a system for storing proof of consent. Most email marketing tools handle this for you, but you may want to have this information backed up elsewhere.

All in all, be honest and respect your subscribers’ rights.

Pro tip: Never buy an email list. There’s no way to verify consent for purchased lists. These lists also often use inactive and low-quality email addresses to bolster their numbers. Building your list organically may be hard work, but it’s well worth the effort! Need help growing your list? Check out our guide to list building and management.

When to refresh consent

In some instances, you might want or even need to refresh consent. At MailPoet, we suggest you refresh consent in the following situations:

• You want to put contacts on your newsletter for the first time, rather than sending communications via your personal email.
• You want to email professional contacts via MailPoet instead of your business email.
• You want to email your WooCommerce customers for the first time.
• You haven’t emailed a certain list in over a year. 
• Your business model or the type of content you plan to send via email is changing significantly.

If any of these situations apply to you, take a look at our guide to refreshing consent in MailPoet. 

How to retain consent when moving your list to MailPoet

What happens to consent when you switch email marketing providers? Can you just move your list over, or do you need to ask people to consent to the new list?

If everything else about your business model and email marketing communications will remain the same, you can use the same proof of consent. In fact, most email marketing services offer a simple option for exporting your subscriber data as a spreadsheet, which can be uploaded to your new email marketing tool.

Switching to MailPoet is even easier if you’re coming from Mailchimp. Our integration allows you to import a Mailchimp list with just a couple of clicks, no downloads required:

To switch to MailPoet from a different email marketing service, complete the following steps:

• Export your contacts as a spreadsheet (.CSV). You may need to look at the documentation for your current email marketing tool to figure out where this is done.
• Open your WordPress dashboard and go to the “Subscribers” area of MailPoet.
• Click the “Import” button at the top of the screen. This will take you to a page recommending that you clean your list before adding it to MailPoet. For the purposes of this article, we’ll assume you’ve cleaned your list recently; if you haven’t, be sure to clean your list before moving it! Otherwise, click “Got it, proceed to import”.

• Choose “Upload a file”, then find the appropriate spreadsheet in the File Explorer.
• Once you’ve selected the proper file, click “Next Step”.
• Confirm the list you want to add these subscribers to. You can also select the status new subscribers will receive, if existing subscribers’ information will be updated, and whether or not to update their information.

• Review all of the data and click “Import”.

Once you’ve moved subscribers onto your MailPoet list, you may want to refresh consent, but this isn’t necessary if you’ve been regularly communicating with this list.

Final thoughts on the importance of consent in email marketing

Consent is an essential cornerstone of email marketing. You need it to market ethically, to stay within the terms and conditions of any legitimate email marketing service, and to comply with international anti-spam laws.

The good news is that email marketing tools like MailPoet collect all of the data you need for proof of consent. They also have tools in place to help you create easy-to-understand signup forms, export your list, and refresh consent at key intervals. 

You should also be sure to follow some best practices when creating your signup forms:

• Be 100% clear about the data you’re asking for and how you intend to use it
• Use easy-to-understand language
• Make sure users know what company, person or organization they’re giving their email address to
• Never auto-fill checkboxes on your signup forms
• Make it easy for subscribers to opt out at any time
• Have a system for storing proof of consent, especially if you also use paper signup forms at in-person events.

And remember, the value of your list is their consent.

In this guide, I will show you:

• What an automated welcome sequence is
• How to create an automated welcome sequence
• 5 examples of excellent automated welcome sequences

By the end of this article, you’ll have all of the knowledge you need to build an awesome welcome sequence for your subscribers.

What is an automated welcome sequence?

An automated welcome sequence is exactly what it sounds like: a series of emails that are automatically sent to new subscribers. These emails can be sent right away or scheduled to go out days, weeks, or even months after someone joins your list.

There are several benefits to using an automated welcome sequence:

• Cement your brand’s reputation. Every email in your automated welcome sequence demonstrates your brand’s value and reminds people why they signed up for your newsletter in the first place.
• Deepen relationships with your subscribers. Offering more content up front gives subscribers a deeper understanding of your brand right away. You can also use your welcome sequence to ask questions about what subscribers want from your brand.
• Make sales. Your automated welcome sequence is a great place to remind people of your products or highlight products they might not have seen.
• Get feedback. You can also use your welcome sequence to ask for feedback on your newsletter, your overall brand, or even the content of the welcome sequence itself.

All in all, an automated welcome sequence is a great way to further your email marketing goals.

How to create an automated welcome sequence

1. Choose a goal

The first thing you need to figure out is what the main goal of your automated welcome sequence is. Most of the time, the goal of your welcome series will fall into one of three categories:

• Relationship building. This includes goals like receiving feedback or getting subscribers to answer a specific question, like “what do you want to see in this newsletter?”.
• Sales. This includes goals like selling a specific product to a percentage of your subscribers.
• Growth. This includes goals like getting subscribers to recommend your newsletter or products.

You also want to make sure that you’re setting SMART goals. These are goals that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-based. This goal framework makes it easy to track your progress and make sure that your efforts are pushing you in the right direction.

To create SMART goals, you need a basic understanding of your existing newsletter stats. Namely, you need to know a) how many subscribers you already have and b) how many of those subscribers are already interacting with your content. If you want to set a sales goal, you’ll also want to look at sales for products you’ve promoted in your newsletter.

Once you’re familiar with these statistics, you’ll have a better idea of what a realistic goal actually is. For example, if you have 10 subscribers now, you’re probably not going to hit 1000 subscribers in three months without a major advertising budget. On the other hand, if you have 700 subscribers, hitting 1000 in three months is completely reasonable.

If you’re not sure what a realistic goal is, consider asking colleagues or employees for their thoughts.

Sequences with multiple goals

Some brands can benefit from creating an automated sequence with multiple goals. Take a look at the goals of each email in the Author Marketing Club welcome sequence I’m planning:

• Welcome email – Goal: get feedback from 5% of new subscribers about the content they want to see.
• Second email – Goal: get 10% of subscribers to grab my Author Career Planning Workbook. This workbook is available for Pay What You Can pricing, so this can be a sale, but it’s more about building relationships/establishing trust.
• Third email – Goal: get 20% of subscribers to buy my Branding for Fiction Authors workbook.

Each email in this sequence has its own goal. The first two focus on relationship building and the third focuses on sales. From here, I might expand the sequence to include emails about other products, requests for feedback on the newsletter itself, or surveys to get to know my audience better.

We’ll talk more about how to create automated welcome sequences with multiple goals in the next section.

2. Plan your automated welcome sequence

Once you’ve selected a goal, you’re ready to outline an automated welcome sequence to meet that goal. There are several factors to consider as you build your outline:

• Your audience’s goals. What problem or desire brings people to your website? What do they expect your content, products, or services to provide them with? How can you provide some of that experience or assistance in your automated welcome sequence?
• What your business excels at. Do you create excellent educational content? Offer a unique service? Sell high-quality products? What is your most popular product or service? How can you demonstrate this in your automated welcome sequence?
• How you can encourage subscribers to take action. How can you use your automated welcome sequence to establish yourself as a quality brand? Can you share testimonials or reviews? Offer a discount? What about a free trial or sample of your work? Learn more about offering an incentive in this post.
• How much time and money you’re prepared to invest. Do you have time to build an elaborate welcome sequence from scratch? Are you able to hire a designer to create branded email templates? Are you even interested in doing those things, or are you better off slapping a discount into your first email and reminding people about it a couple of times?

What you’re hoping to discover by asking these questions is the intersection between what your subscribers want and what you want. You can then create a welcome sequence that centers the subscriber experience while also achieving your goals.

Here’s an example of what this might look like for an ecommerce business that sells office supplies with a unique aesthetic:

• Welcome sequence goal: Sell desk organizers to 20% of new subscribers.
• Audience goal: To create an attractive, organized workspace they can thrive in.
• What my company can provide: High-quality desk organizers in several different colors.
• What incentive subscribers get to take action: A 20% discount + photos/testimonials of the desk organizer working in different spaces.
• How much time and money I’m prepared to invest: $100 for a personalized email template + four hours to build content.
• Email sequence: Welcome email with discount – Discount reminder with new testimonials/photos – Second discount reminder with more photos/testimonials

This email sequence is effective because each message focuses on the benefit provided to the customer. The emails are also short and direct, showing that you respect the time of your audience. You can use a similar outline for any sales-focused welcome sequence.

Planning an automated welcome sequence with multiple goals

You can use a similar process to plan a welcome sequence with multiple goals. For example, if you want to build strong subscriber relationships so you can sell an expensive course or coaching program for aspiring entrepreneurs, your plan might look something like this:

• Welcome sequence goals: Attract 100 new subscribers per month, receive content suggestions from 5% of those subscribers, and sell the flagship course to 10%.
• Audience goal: To advance their careers by acquiring new skills and sharpening the ones they already have.
• What my company can provide: Resources on business planning, financial management, and marketing skills.
• What incentive subscribers get to take action: Testimonials/personal stories of how resources or activities have helped other users + a 10% discount on the flagship course.
• How much time and money I’m prepared to invest: 10 hours to build content + $100 for a personalized email template
• Email sequence: Welcome email with business planning worksheet – Resource list to help people complete the planning worksheet – Feedback request: how did the worksheet help you – First offer of 10% discount – Discount reminder with testimonials & photos – Second discount reminder with new photos/testimonials

This email sequence includes three emails dedicated to relationship building. The opt-in bonus of a business planning worksheet also encourages more website visitors to join your list.

Email courses

One of the most effective types of automated welcome sequence is the email course. This is a series of typically 3-7 emails with lessons and/or worksheets related to what your audience wants to accomplish.

How to create an email course is a subject worthy of its own article, but there are a few best practices to remember as you plan it:

• Choose a hyper-specific topic. You want to choose a subject you can provide powerful insights about in a small series of short emails. People will expect a course email to be longer than a marketing email, but you still want to respect their time.
• Establish a student objective. This is the thing your students will learn, do, or create by the end of the course. You want it to be something students can easily measure, establishing your value as an educator.
• Include links to more advanced resources. Ideally, these should be links to articles on your blog or information products you’ve created.

Want to offer a more in-depth course? Consider recording a webinar or video series and giving your subscribers links to each lesson. This lets you deliver more advanced information without weighing down your subscriber’s inbox. Leanne Wong has done this, including a link to her SEO Bootcamp on Teachable in her welcome email:

3. Draft your automated welcome sequence

With your plan in place, it’s time to start creating your automated welcome sequence. You can do this directly in the MailPoet editor, but I prefer to draft all of the emails in a Google Doc first. This makes it easy to view them all together and make sure the content flows well from one email to the next.

There are some best practices to keep in mind as you work on your drafts:

• Make an offer for every call to action. In other words, every time you want your subscriber to take action, the action should benefit them too. This might come in the form of learning more from an article on your site, the opportunity to shape future content or products, or a direct discount. The key is to incentivize every call to action.
• Keep your content short. The average person sends and receives 121 emails every single day. They don’t have the capacity to spend more than a minute or two on each one. There’s some wiggle room for educational content, but the data shows that the most successful emails contain between 50 and 125 words.
• Focus on the visual experience. Your emails should use large text, clear images and complimentary colors. You also want to avoid cluttering your emails with too many elements or links close together.
• Use a mobile-friendly template. If you hire someone to create a branded template, make sure it uses responsive design to look good on small screens. You can also guarantee that your design will look great on phones by using one of the templates included with MailPoet.

With these rules in mind and a customer-centric approach, you’re sure to create content that will win your subscribers over.

4. Schedule your automated welcome sequence

The final step in how to create an automated welcome sequence is to schedule your emails. As a MailPoet user, you can do this by opening your WordPress admin panel and going to “MailPoet > Emails“. Click on the “+ New Email” button to open a page where you can select the type of email you want to send:

Select “Welcome Email“. This will open a page where you can choose when the email is sent and what list it will go to.

Once you’ve confirmed these details, you’ll be walked through the regular editorial process. You’ll note that there are already numerous templates on MailPoet for welcome emails:

You’ll need to repeat this process for each email in your automated welcome sequence.

The best schedule for your welcome sequence will depend on your audience and the content of your welcome emails, but there are some rules to keep in mind:

• Send your first email right away. This immediately establishes a positive relationship with your subscribers.
• Space out your other emails. Sending an email every day might seem like the smart move, but this approach makes your content more likely to overwhelm subscribers or even feel like spam.
• End the sequence within a month. Your regular emails will still be going to these users during this time. Too many additional emails can alienate users, causing you to lose large numbers of subscribers.

All in all, the key is to make sure your emails are consistent enough to keep your offer in the forefront of subscribers’ minds without being so frequent that they feel like spam.

5. Promote your automated welcome sequence

If one of your goals for this automated welcome sequence is to draw in new subscribers, you’ll need to promote what you’re offering. There are several places where you can do this:

• In your signup forms.
• On your social media pages.
• At the end of relevant blog posts and pages.
• During the checkout process.
• In your professional bio.

For more ideas, check out our Ultimate Guide to List Building and Management.

Awesome automated welcome sequences

1. Patch

Patch is an online retailer that sells house plants. When you subscribe to their newsletter, you’ll receive a course that shows you how to keep your new plants healthy. Once you’re able to keep one plant healthy for several months, you’ll most likely want more, and you’ll trust Patch to deliver them.

When you finish the course, you’re also told to contact the company’s plant doctor for help if you need it. This invites you to build a stronger relationship with Patch and further establishes the company’s expertise.

These emails are also highly visual, with a one-column layout that looks great on mobile phones. All in all, this is a great example of how to create an automated welcome sequence.

2. Double your freelance income

Double Your Freelance Income takes automated welcome sequences to the next level with personalized email courses. You enter your email address, answer a few basic questions, and receive content tailored to your current situation as a freelancer.

You’ll note that these emails are formatted in a much simpler way. They’re also significantly longer than the recommended 50-125 words. This is both because the primary focus is on the educational content and because the primary audience is writers.

3. Sleeknote

Sleeknote also offers an email course for new subscribers, but their emails include more visual elements. The first email also contains an immediate bonus: access to 35 premium resources subscribers can use to send better emails.

4. MonsterInsights

The MonsterInsights email welcome sequence is a great example of a sequence with multiple goals. In the first email, you’re reminded of the benefits MonsterInsights provides to your website:

The second email contains a simple piece of marketing advice, along with a link to a more detailed resource on the subject.

This establishes a level of trust between MonsterInsights and new subscribers, which is needed for the goal of the third email: to sell the Pro version of MonsterInsights.

You’ll note that this promotional email includes a 50% off coupon. Even after establishing trust, MonsterInsights still partners its ask with an offer.

5. MailPoet

And last, but by no means least, we had to give our own welcome email sequence a mention! MailPoet offers subscribers a 4-part email course explaining core aspects of successful email marketing. These emails are quite long, offering detailed information and step-by-step processes:

You’ll note that while the email itself is long, the information is broken into short sections, with lots of white space between pieces of information. This makes it easier to read, especially on small screens.

Each email also includes multiple links to resources on the MailPoet site. In fact, the final email consists mostly of a resource list:

This encourages people to visit the MailPoet blog while also providing immense value for subscribers who are new to email marketing.

Make sure you sign up to see them in action

Final thoughts on how to create an automated welcome sequence

Automated welcome sequences are powerful tools for building customer relationships, making sales, and getting feedback from your audience. You can create a successful automated welcome sequence by remembering some best practices:

• Choose at least one SMART goal. You can take this a step further by having a different goal for each email in the sequence.
• Find the intersection between your goal and your audience’s goal. Use this information to plan content that helps both you and your subscribers.
• Plan your content in advance. Outline the sequence of emails in its entirety before you start drafting.
• Remember email marketing best practices. Things like mobile-friendly design and clear calls-to-action are especially important in an automated welcome sequence.

Once you’ve drafted your automated welcome sequence, it’s incredibly easy to schedule using MailPoet. So start building your first automated welcome sequence today!

In this guide, I’ll explore:

• What an opt-in bonus/lead magnet is
• Types of opt-in bonuses
• How to create a successful opt-in bonus
• How to market your opt-in bonus
• 6 inspiring opt-in bonuses

By the end of this article, you’ll be ready to start building your first lead magnet.

What is an opt-in bonus?

An opt-in bonus, often referred to as a lead magnet, is a bonus someone receives upon signing up for your newsletter. This can be anything related to your business; some common choices are coupon codes and ebooks.

Lead magnets offer several advantages:

• They offer extra incentive for visitors who are hesitant to subscribe to your list
• They help you establish a relationship with your subscribers right away
• They demonstrate the value of your brand, and in the case of coupons, directly encourage purchases.

The one potential downside of opt-in bonuses is that they can attract junk subscribers. These are subscribers who only join your list to get the signup bonus. Too many of these can lead to low open rates and high unsubscribe rates. This makes it important to limit what you give away and to market your lead magnet effectively.

Types of opt-in bonuses

You can turn almost anything into an opt-in bonus. I’ve taken the time to list popular opt-in choices for several types of businesses.

Ecommerce

• Coupon code
• Free gift in the mail, such as a sticker pack
• Entrance in a contest, especially a repeating contest

Education

• Worksheet
• Workbook
• Ebook
• Email course
• Video course
• Webinar
• Template
• Resource library

Lifestyle/self-improvement

• Checklist
• Planner
• Case study
• Recipe or recipe collection
• Access to a private community on Facebook, Discord, etc.
• Timed challenge, such as a 30-day Write Every Day challenge

Professional services (law, accounting, etc.)

• Free consultation

Artists

• Downloadable graphics pack
• Printables, such as coloring pages

In short, anything relevant to your audience can be a lead magnet.

How to create a successful opt-in bonus

1. Understand your audience

The most effective lead magnets are relevant and helpful to your audience. This makes it important to know who you’re talking to, what problem(s) they hope to address by buying your products or working with you, and how you can help them solve it.

You can figure this out with customer profiles. These are documents about fictional people who represent segments of your real audience. You want to establish who they are in as much detail as possible. What gender are they? What industry do they work in? Where do they live? Do they have pets? What do they struggle with?

I recommend creating two customer profiles:

• Your existing customer. This is the person who is already a member of your audience, maybe even a member of your email list. Understanding them can help you figure out what is already appealing about your newsletter, therefore helping you choose what to expand on with your opt-in bonuse.
• Your target customer. Also referred to as your “ideal” customer, this is the person you most want to have as a customer. They’re also the primary audience for your opt-in bonus, since existing customers are already predisposed to join your list.

You’ll need to use slightly different research approaches to understand each audience. To understand existing customers, look at the analytics of your website, store, and newsletter. You can also send your subscribers a survey or post polls on your website to learn more about your audience.

To understand your target customer, answer the following questions:

• What problem(s) does your business solve? How can your products improve people’s lives or workplaces?
• Who has this problem(s)? People in a certain industry? People of a certain age? Residents of a specific area?

Once you’ve narrowed it down a bit, you can start looking at demographics research. Many governments track demographic information on residents, including average income levels and ages in certain areas. There are also many organizations dedicated to tracking demographics in specific industries. A quick Google search can help you find out who’s doing this research in your location or industry.

As you research, add important details to your customer profile. By the end, it should look something like this*:

Name: Sarah

Gender: Woman

Job: Marketing manager at a tech firm

Income: $80,000/year

Location: New York

Family: Married, no kids

Primary problem: Work/life balance

Hobbies: Pilates, reading nonfiction about a variety of subjects, listening to true crime podcasts.

You may also want to add customized information fields relevant to your business. For example, if you wanted to sell Sarah a plugin for automating social media, you might include the types of social media she’s comfortable with. You might also include a field for the social media sites or apps she struggles with.

You can dig deeper into this process with the HubSpot guide to creating a customer profile.

*All names and numbers are completely made up

2. Provide an immediate, tangible benefit

With a deepened understanding of your audience, you’re now prepared to create a bonus they’ll want. This will be something relevant to both their problem and their priorities.

Let’s go back to Sarah. Her primary problem is work/life balance, so she probably doesn’t want to spend a lot of time reading an ebook. She also makes a good wage, especially if her partner is working, so she’s probably willing to pay full price for a tool that helps her save time. This means a coupon might not be the best approach either.

So what can you offer Sarah? Personally, I would consider something like a planner or checklist. Something to help her streamline her time and start building work/life balance.

You can follow a similar path of logic from your customer profile to your opt-in bonus. This will help you create something that immediately benefits your subscribers.

One company that does this well is DIY MFA. The site provides educational resources to new writers who want to improve their craft without investing in a traditional MFA. To get users started on this journey, they offer subscribers a free email course:

Active Campaign, on the other hand, embeds an offer for a free 14-day trial in most of their blog posts. This is effective for their audience, who are looking to save time and energy on their day-to-day marketing tasks.

Both of these examples provide immediate tools subscribers can use to start achieving their goals. This helps establish these companies as helpful entities in the customer’s mind.

3. Automate delivery

Once you’ve created your lead magnet, you need to automate delivery. This ensures that subscribers receive their bonus right away without you needing to hover over your list and send rewards to one individual at a time.

You can do this easily in MailPoet. Simply go to “Emails > + New Email” in MailPoet and choose “Welcome Email”.

This will take you to a page where you can choose what list the email is sent to and when it is sent.

In the case of an opt-in bonus, you’ll want to send the email immediately upon them registering. This gives people an instant reminder of why they subscribed to you and allows them to take action right away.

Pro tip: If your opt-in bonus is an information product, send a follow-up email asking for feedback 1-2 weeks later.

How to market your opt-in bonus

The best opt-in bonus in the world won’t win subscribers over if nobody knows about it.

Opt-in bonuses should be marketed in a variety of places:

Signup forms

Every signup form on your website should include some information about your opt-in bonus.

An embedded signup form at the bottom of pages and blog posts is a great place to put a detailed description of your newsletter and opt-in. The embedded signup form at the end of every Social Media Examiner blog post is a great example of this:

You can fit a shorter description into horizontal bars and fixed/floating bar forms. DIY MFA offers a really quick summary of their opt-in bonus in a horizontal bar near the top of the site:

If you’re not sure about what type of signup form(s) you want to use, check our guide to mobile-friendly signup forms.

Landing pages

Landing pages are marketing pages dedicated to one specific product or service. These pages can include lengthy descriptions of your newsletter and opt-in bonus, images of your opt-in bonus, and testimonials from subscribers—anything to convince people to join your list.

Landing pages are most often used for information products, like this guide to social media from the MainStreetHost digital marketing agency:

The one thing your landing page shouldn’t contain is links to other parts of your website. After all, the one and only goal of a newsletter landing page is to gain subscribers. If you really feel that it’s important to include links to other areas of your site, put them at the bottom of the page and keep them small.

Company and user profiles

There are many spaces online where you can publish a page about your business. Social media networks, professional associations, BIA websites, and local business directories are some of the most common. And all of these profiles are excellent places to put a link to your newsletter landing page.

As for your personal social media profiles, there are a couple of things to consider before you publish a link:

• How do you use this profile? If you often discuss your business or use your personal profile as a space for additional promotion, add a link to your newsletter. On the other hand, if a specific profile is only used to communicate with friends and family, you might not want to post your newsletter link. Your friends are, after all, rarely your target audience.
• What is common practice on this network? Do people usually post promotional links in their profiles here? Are there rules about what links you can and cannot put in your profile? Is it better to put your newsletter link somewhere else, like in a pinned tweet on your Twitter profile?

Many of these profiles also have character limits, so you may want to shorten the link using a tool like Bit.ly. I’ve done this with the newsletter link in my Twitter bio:

If you’re active on a specific social media network, having a link in your bio can bring in dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of new subscribers every month.

Social media posts

While we’re talking about social media, it’s important to promote your opt-in bonus in individual social media posts. This serves as a reminder to people who might have been unsure about signing up when they first followed you. Now familiar with your content, these users are more likely to sign up when they see the link again. These posts are also more likely to be promoted on others’ feeds.

There are a couple of rules to keep in mind here:

• Pay attention to the best practices on each platform. Specifically, learn the best times to post and the best posting frequency for each platform. This can help you determine the best posting schedule for your opt-in promotions.
• Schedule these posts in batches. This is a great practice for all of your social media posts, but it’s particularly important for infrequent posts like promotions for your lead magnet. Personally, the main place I promote my newsletter is on Twitter, and I like to schedule the promo tweets a full six months in advance. I use Hootsuite, but there are several tools available for this.

Most of all, remember to keep the “social” in your social media presence. Nobody wants to follow an account that feels like a promotional bot.

Guest appearances

Guest appearances on blogs, podcasts, and other media outlets are some of the best ways to promote your business. Build references to your opt-in bonus into answers for common interview questions, include a link to it in your bio, and do your best to mention it whenever possible.

6 inspiring opt-in bonuses

To give you a better idea of what your lead magnet can look like, I’ve rounded up some of my favourite opt-in bonuses from a variety of industries.

1. Wrike

Wrike offers a digital cheat sheet for digital marketers looking to create more efficient campaigns:

2. HubSpot

HubSpot has an enormous number of lead magnets and has really mastered the art of the landing page, as you can see from this page for the “Best Practices for Lead Generation” document.

3. Total Coaching

Total Coaching is a specialized business resource for personal trainers. This company offers a PDF guide for building an online personal trainer business.

4. Kate Spade

Kate Spade is a well-known brand of luxury purses, so the simple offer of 10% off your next purchase is an excellent opt-in bonus. This offer isn’t heavily marketed, but you will find it at the bottom of almost every page.

5. Marie Forleo

Marie Forleo gives subscribers an exclusive audio training.

6. Venture Superfly

Venture Superfly is a coaching program for budding entrepreneurs who want to create a start up or grow an existing business. The company offers a free 20-minute consultation. I love this one in particular because the personalized attention goes far beyond what most other opt-in bonuses provide.

Final advice

Opt-in bonuses aren’t essential, but they can be a great way to get more subscribers and strengthen your relationship with your audience. They can also be anything relevant to your business, from a simple discount to a series of video trainings.

To use lead magnets effectively, remember a few key rules:

• Understand your audience
• Provide an immediate, tangible benefit
• Use your email marketing tool to automatically deliver your opt-in bonus
• Be sure to market your lead magnet with a landing page, on social media, and in all of your guest appearances

What kind of opt-in bonus are you thinking about making? Let us know in the comments section below!

In this guide, I will explore the ins and outs of optimizing your mailing list. These are organized into three sections:

• Starting your list. Discover the importance of goal setting and scheduling time for list building and management. I’ll also talk about the importance of using both signup forms and landing pages + how to get your contacts onto your list legally and ethically.
• Growing your list. Learn how to break your main subscriber goal into small, actionable steps. I’ll also discuss how to build a signup opportunity into every interaction, the power of signup incentives, and how to build a list if your business is local.
• Maintaining your list. Make sure your email address is whitelisted, your open rate stays good, and your list is clean.

By the time we’re done, you’ll have all of the knowledge and resources you need to build a successful email list.

Starting your email list

The early days of your email list are the hardest. With nobody on your email list—we’ll discuss in a bit why you want to start at zero—it’s hard to see the value of it. However, if you approach email marketing with discipline and strategy from the beginning, you’ll eventually reap the rewards.

Goal setting and scheduling

The first step to creating a successful email list is to build a realistic long term subscriber goal. For example, you might aim for 1,000 subscribers in one year (although many small businesses thrive with fewer subscribers). This gives you both something to aim for and a reasonable amount of time to do it.

Moreover, setting a goal for one year out encourages you to stay the course for twelve whole months. We tend to think of the internet as a place where everything happens quickly, but most “overnight sensations” have put several months or even years of work into their success. You need to give your strategies—we’ll talk about those later—time to work.

The second part of this is that you must actively schedule time for list growth and maintenance. This can be a half hour or a whole afternoon, whatever fits into your existing workday. The key is to make sure it’s a regular appointment, booked in your calendar for a specific time each week or month, with reminders to hold you accountable.

Signup forms

Next, you’ll want to create some signup forms and place them in strategic locations on your website.

Signup forms should have prominent placement on your site and minimal required information. Extra information is great for personalization, but every additional field someone needs to fill out is an obstacle between them and signing up.

Your signup forms should also be mobile friendly. Luckily, MailPoet signup form templates already are!

There are four types of signup forms you need to work with:

Embedded forms

These are forms placed directly in the content of a post or page. For example, I’ve embedded this form into the home page of my Business for Authors site:

You can place these forms anywhere within your content. Personally, I find these forms most effective when placed at the bottom of a post or page. Your audience has enjoyed your content enough to read to the end, so they’re more receptive to receiving more content from you.

You may also want to put an embedded signup form in the sidebar or footer of your website.

Pro tip: If your site is still under construction, put a signup form front and center on the “Under Construction” page. This gives you a built-in group to announce your new site to!

Pop-ups

Pop-ups are signup forms that appear as an overlay on top of your content. Many people dislike them because of their intrusive nature, but that intrusive nature is what makes them effective. A pop-up forces you to consider a company’s offer.

This pop-up from Optimonk is a great example:

The best email marketing tools also offer specialized features to make pop-ups less intrusive. You can set a pop-up to open when someone tries to navigate away from your page or after they’ve been looking at your content for a certain period of time.

This is quite easy to do in MailPoet. Simply enable pop-up placement for your form, scroll down to the bottom of the sidebar, and fill in the required fields:

Pop-up forms can be effective on any page of your site, but they are particularly powerful for long-form content.

Slide-ins

Slide-ins are exactly what they sound like: signup forms that slide into view as someone scrolls down the page. These forms typically appear in the bottom left or right corner, and they are often quite small. Many even start as a simple button, like this slide-in form on the Sleeknote blog:

Slide-in forms are effective because our eyes are naturally drawn to movement. This means we’re bound to notice a slide-in form, especially if it’s a vibrant color. They’re also less intrusive than pop-ups, since they don’t take up the entire page or cover the content users are trying to view.

You can use slide-in forms to great effect on any pages long enough that people are likely to scroll down. To create one in MailPoet, simply build your form as you normally would, then choose “Slide-in” as your form placement. You’ll then be able to customize several aspects of the form, including setting a time delay before it appears.

Fixed bar forms

The final type of signup form to consider is a fixed bar form, sometimes called a floating bar form. This type of form appears along the top of your website and stays there, following your visitors as they scroll through content.

Many sites, like OptinMonster, use fixed bar forms to great effect.

These forms are great for long pages or blog posts, making sure your visitors can access the signup form any time they want.

You can turn any MailPoet form into a fixed bar form by choosing “Fixed Bar Form” from the placement options in the form editor. However, fixed bar forms work best with minimal height, so you’re better off creating a custom signup form for this.

Landing pages

The other marketing tool you want to create right away is a landing page. This is a specialized marketing page with no links other than the signup link for your newsletter. Landing pages tend to feature short, punchy copy with an emphasis on what people receive if they sign up.

These pages work even better when combined with a specific subscriber incentive, like this landing page for Industrial Strength Marketing:

There are several tools you can use to build a high-quality landing page with minimal effort. Some of the most popular are Unbounce, InstaPage, and Wishpond.

Pro tip: Put a link to your landing page in your bios on social media and in guest posts instead of linking to your home page.

Turn your contacts into subscribers

Once you’ve created your signup form and/or landing page, it’s time to utilize your network. Don’t import your contact list into your email marketing software. Adding people to your list without consent is both unethical and highly illegal. Besides, only a small percentage of your contacts will actually be worthwhile leads.

To make effective use of your network, send personalized emails to the people most likely to be interested in your content. These emails need to do two things:

• Explain why this person might be interested in your newsletter
• Ask them directly to sign up, with a link to where they can do so

If you haven’t spoken to the person you’re emailing in a while, you might also want to remind them of who you are. Conversely, if you’re emailing someone you communicate with regularly, you might also ask them to share your newsletter with anyone who might be interested.

Add a link to your signature

Finally, you can turn every email into an opportunity to gain a subscriber by adding a signup link to your email signature. This can go underneath your main website link.

Dos and don’ts of starting your newsletter

Do

• Set long term subscribers goals
• Schedule time for drafting email content
• Schedule time for marketing your list
• Use multiple types of signup forms
• Build a landing page + use the link in author bios
• Ask colleagues and/or clients who might be interested in your content to subscribe and/or share your newsletter
• Put a link to your newsletter in your email signature

Don’t

• Wait to publish your newsletter signup form until your site is live; you want a list to announce the new site to!
• Rely on only one type of signup form
• Leave your email marketing to the last minute/whenever you “have time”
• Import contacts from an old newsletter list; if the old list has only been dormant for a short period of time, send a newsletter asking people to subscribe to the new one
• Import contacts from your email or social media (learn how to safely reconfirm your subscribers instead)

Growing your list

With your signup forms in place and your contacts turned into subscribers, it’s time to think about your long-term email marketing strategy.

Create short term goals

The first part of your email marketing strategy will be your goals. These should be daily, weekly, and monthly subscriber goals calculated to help you reach your long-term subscriber goal.

To calculate these goals, subtract the number of subscribers you already have from your long-term goal. For example, if your goal is 1,000 subscribers by the end of the year and 100 of your contacts signed up for your newsletter (this is pretty generous for most small businesses, but the round numbers are useful), you need to get 900 subscribers. 900 divided by 12 is 75, so you’ll need 75 new subscribers per month.

Remember that some industries have quiet periods and hyper-active periods throughout the year. If you run a B2B business, you might see a dip in new subscribers during December. To make up for this, you might want to aim for 80 signups per month throughout the rest of the year. This reduces your required signups for December to 20.

On the other hand, if you run an ecommerce store, December might be your busiest month. If this is the case, you might expect to get 150 signups, reducing your regular monthly subscriber requirement to 68/month.

If these numbers sound intimidating to you, don’t worry! You can always choose lower numbers. However, I encourage you not to limit yourself to “safe” numbers. Aim to stretch yourself a little bit. If you think you can hit 300 subscribers, aim for 400.

Create a signup incentive

The best way to ramp up your subscriber numbers is to increase the value of what you’re offering. A signup incentive does exactly this, with the added bonus of instant gratification.

Your signup incentive can be any bonus relevant to your audience. For example, if you run a fitness blog, you might grant access to a short training video.

There are numerous other possibilities as well:

• Checklist
• Worksheet or workbook
• Ebook
• Email course
• Video course
• Quiz
• Webinar
• Templates
• Access to an additional community, such as a private Facebook group or Slack channel
• Entrance in a giveaway, especially a recurring giveaway
• Coupons or discount codes

One company that does this really well is Social Media Examiner. They’re constantly doing valuable research on social media and offering the latest reports as subscriber freebies.

The possibilities are as endless as your imagination. However, it’s important to remember your opt-in bonus is a major part of your list building strategy. You shouldn’t choose a freebie because it’s easy to create or the first idea that comes to mind. Consider what will benefit your customers most and what you can do well. Your opt-in bonus should be the item that best fits both of those criteria.

Promote your newsletter on social media

Funneling your social media followers into your email list makes them permanent members of your audience (unless they choose to unsubscribe). But putting a link in your bio isn’t enough. You need to include regular posts about it in your social media schedule.

The details of this schedule should be optimized for the platforms your audience is on. I don’t want to get into the details of each platform here, but there are some basic rules to remember:

• Images attract attention. Even on Twitter, a platform arguably known for being text-based, posts with images are retweeted 150x more than posts text-only posts.
• Authenticity shines. People love to get to know the person or team behind a brand. Sharing the occasional personal story or behind-the-scenes moment emphasizes the “social” part of social media; this can also make people want to connect with you further.
• People expect brands to be responsive. In fact, 79% of people expect brands to respond to social media messages within 24 hours. Responding to messages and comments from your audience builds relationships, encouraging them to take actions like signing up for your newsletter.
• Consistency is key. You can’t expect your whole audience to see every post you make. This means you need to promote things like your newsletter on a regular basis. Consider scheduling one post about your newsletter per week on each social media platform.

You can use a scheduling tool like Buffer to make this easier.

Turn sales into subscribers

The next place you want to create signup opportunities is during your sales process. You can do this in a couple of ways:

• Ask during checkout. Add a simple checkbox where customers can choose to be subscribed. This will typically appear at the end of the process.
• Include a link in your thank-you email. You can sweeten the deal by offering a special coupon code, possibly a larger one than your primary signup incentive.
• Send a follow-up email. When your customers have had some time to enjoy your products/services, send an email saying something like “If you enjoyed this product, subscribe to see what we make next”. Again, you can sweeten the deal by offering a special discount, but this isn’t necessary.

Thank-you emails and follow-up emails can easily be sent using MailPoet’s WooCommerce integration. Go to the “Emails” area of MailPoet and click “+New Email”, then scroll down to the WooCommerce emails area. You’ll note four options: Abandoned Cart Emails, First Purchase Emails, Purchased This Product, and Purchased In This Category. These emails are automatically sent when the relevant action is completed.

Once you choose an option, you’ll be asked to specify how soon after the action an email is sent. For example, you might choose to send a thank-you email right away. A follow-up email, on the other hand, might come a week later (even longer if physical products are being shipped).

Pro tip: If you run a brick-and-mortar business or sell at events, keep a signup sheet near the cash register.

In-person networking

Gatherings in many places are limited right now due to COVID-19, but that doesn’t mean they’re a thing of the past. As vaccination programs progress, small events and eventually full-blown conferences will return. You can use these events to gain subscribers in a few different ways:

• Add the link to your business cards. Along with your email and website, list your newsletter link. You can even commission a specialized set of business cards that only link to your newsletter.
• Hold a raffle or contest. Create a free raffle/contest that requires an email address or a paid raffle/contest where people can leave their email addresses during registration.
• Perfect your “elevator pitch”. This is a one-sentence pitch you can throw out whenever someone asks about your newsletter. Focus on how your newsletter can help people and test multiple versions of the pitch, ideally with a friend before you attend the event.

If you have a table at an event, you can also place a signup sheet at the front of the table. When people ask what they’re signing up for, just toss out your elevator pitch!

Dos and don’ts of growing your list

Do

• Break your long-term subscriber goal down into monthly, weekly, and/or daily goals
• Create a signup incentive
• Add regular newsletter promotions to your social media schedule
• Add a signup option to the checkout process of your ecommerce store
• Put a signup sheet beside the cash register in brick-and-mortar stores and at events
• Include signup links in thank you emails
• Send follow up emails to customers asking them to subscribe after they’ve had time to enjoy a purchase
• Consider offering a special incentive for people who purchase something from you to also sign up for your newsletter
• Use the MailPoet integration with WooCommerce to automate your follow-up emails
• Add your newsletter link to your business cards
• Prepare an elevator pitch for your newsletter + practice it until it rolls off the tongue
• Consider using contests or raffles to encourage signups

Don’t

• Spam personal or professional contacts who have already said they’re not interested in your newsletter with requests
• Buy subscriber lists to artificially boost your numbers (I’ll talk more about this in the section on list maintenance)
• Assume you can post your newsletter to social media once and everyone will see it
• Rush the creation of your opt-in bonus

Maintaining your list

The final piece of the email marketing puzzle is list maintenance. This includes both basic things like sending content regularly and advanced tasks like making sure you’re whitelisted, monitoring your open rates, and performing regular list cleanups.

Ask subscribers to whitelist your email

Some email clients use extremely strict spam filters. To make sure your content always gets through, ask your customers to whitelist your email address. Put this request in your welcome email so users do it right away.

Some users may not know how to whitelist an email, so you’ll also want to include a link explaining how to whitelist an email address. If you don’t want to link to somebody else’s resource, include step-by-step directions within the email itself.

Send on a regular schedule

Scheduling isn’t just something you use to keep you on track. It’s a way to maintain your relationship with your audience, reducing the likelihood that they’ll unsubscribe or mark your emails as spam.

However, you also don’t want to send too often. According to a survey by TechnologyAdvice, as many as 45% of adults want to receive fewer marketing emails. 24% of those adults would also like to see more informative content.

The best email frequency will vary based on your audience, but I recommend starting with one email per month. This is both frequent enough to keep you in people’s minds and infrequent enough to avoid annoying them. You also won’t have to worry about overworking yourself or missing dates.

Use segmentation

Segmentation is the act of dividing your overall list into groups based on things like demographics or actions taken. For example, you might segment your list into people who have purchased something from you before and people who haven’t.

With segmentation in place, you can create personalized email campaigns for these groups. Sticking with the example above, this might look like writing copy about “Your next purchase” for people who have already bought something from you. Meanwhile, the people who haven’t bought anything from you yet might receive an email talking about “Your first purchase”.

MailPoet lets you segment your audience based on several criteria:

• WordPress user roles
• Emails opened
• Emails unopened
• Links clicked
• People who purchased a specific product from your WooCommerce store
• People who purchased products from a specific category

To do this, go to the “Lists” area of MailPoet and click “+ New Segment” at the top of the screen.

This will open a page where you can select the criteria people must meet in order to become part of this segment. You’ll also be able to enter a name and description for this segment.

For more information on how to make segmentation work for you, check out our Beginner’s Guide to Email Segmentation.

Monitor your analytics

Analytics tell you what parts of your email marketing strategy are successful. There are four key aspects of email marketing analytics:

Subscriber growth

This is the number of subscribers added to your list. You can view statistics for individual days or for growth over time.

Some things to pay attention to here:

• Average weekly signup rate
• Average monthly signup rate
• Spikes in signup numbers
• Links subscribers are coming from

These numbers can help you determine which of your lead generation campaigns is most effective.

To get more advanced reporting on subscriber growth, combine MailPoet with OptinMonster.

Open rates

This is the number of subscribers who open each email, and serves as an indicator of how engaged your audience is. The average open rate is 23.67%, depending on the industry you’re in.

Businesses with smaller lists often enjoy even higher open rates, since these lists are filled with a business’s most die-hard fans. My recently released Author Marketing Club list has a solid open rate of 40% at the time of writing this article. As it grows, however, this number will probably shift to be more in line with the average.

Low open rates on the occasional email typically mean the headline wasn’t up to your usual level of quality. However, if you notice open rates trending downward, this might be an indicator of a more serious problem with your overall strategy. You might be marketing to the wrong people or holding on to a large number of inactive email addresses.

Link clicks

There are two aspects to this:

• How many people click on your links
• What links receive the most clicks

You can use this to determine the best placement and wording for promotional links.

Unsubscribes

This is the number of people who unsubscribe from your newsletter on a weekly or monthly basis. Some turnover is normal, as people’s interests and needs change. However, if you see a spike in unsubscribes or you’re losing more subscribers than you gain in a month, it’s time to revisit your email marketing strategy.

Clean your email list

The final piece of list maintenance is to clean your list. This is the act of removing inactive subscribers and invalid email addresses from your list.

Inactive subscribers are people who have stopped opening your emails for at least a month (where you place the cutoff depends on how often you send emails). Often these people are simply receiving too many emails; other times, they might have lost interest in your work. You can try to re-engage them with specialized campaigns or use our inactive subscriber tool to stop sending them emails.

Invalid email addresses are email addresses that no longer work.

There are three main reasons to clean these types of emails off of your list:

• Improve your open rates
• Reduce your risk of being marked as spam
• Stop paying for worthless email addresses

The best way to do this is with a program like Clearout. These tools use bots to crawl your list and flag inactive and invalid email addresses.

Pro tip: Cleaning your email list isn’t a one-time thing! At minimum, you should clean your list once a year.

Dos and Don’ts of maintaining your email list

Do

• Send content out regularly
• Keep your content informative and relevant to your audience
• Create list segments based on how people interact with your content and products
• Pay attention to your analytics
• Clean your email list once a year

Don’ts

• Forget to send an email out for months at a time
• Send every email to every single user on your list
• Ignore your analytics

Final advice on list building and maintenance

Your email list will only grow if you put time, energy, and strategic thought into making it happen. The details of your strategy will be specific to your business, but there are some key steps to remember:

• Set both long-term and short-term goals
• Schedule everything
• Use multiple types of signup forms
• Build at least one landing page
• Link to your newsletter landing page in your bios on social media and in guest appearances
• Promote your newsletter with scheduled social media posts
• Create an opt-in bonus
• Add signup opportunities to your sales process
• Put a link to your newsletter on your business cards
• Create an elevator pitch for your newsletter
• Ask users to whitelist your email address
• Pay close attention to your analytics
• Clean your email list once a year

Feeling overwhelmed? Get started with some dynamic signup forms. You can do it

That sounds hyperbolic, but if you don’t have mobile-friendly email signup forms, that very well could be the case…or, in the best case, you might just be creating a sub-optimal experience for half your visitors.

Either way, it’s not something you should aspire to, which is why we’re here to explain why you should care about mobile visitors when you create your opt-in forms, and how you can make opt-in forms that still create a great experience for your mobile visitors.

Let’s dig in…

Why it’s important to have mobile-friendly email signup forms

Since around 2017, mobile devices have accounted for more than half of global website traffic – around 51% to be exact, according to Statista.

If your goal is to maximize the number of email signups that you get, you need to pay special attention to mobile visitors. After all, if you ignore half of your potential signups, your overall conversion rates are obviously going to suffer.

What’s more, the experience of interacting with a form is radically different between desktops and mobile touch-based devices. 

There’s some overlap in terms of things like copywriting and colors, but there are also big differences.

For example, popups, which can be quite effective on desktop, can pose a problem for mobile visitors (and also get you smacked with a penalty in Google!). Similarly, buttons that are easy for mouse users to click can be easily mis-touched by users on smartphones.

To sum up:

• A significant percentage of your website’s traffic is likely to be people on mobile devices – around 51% on average.
• Mobile users have different experiences than desktop users, so you can’t just apply the exact same tactics/formats.

And that’s why it’s important to pay attention to the mobile design of your email opt-in forms.

Five best practices for creating mobile-friendly email signup forms

Now that you know why your mobile forms matter, let’s get into how you can better design your forms for your mobile visitors.

Before we get into the best practices, we should probably mention that, if you’re using MailPoet, our built-in form builder already implements these best practices for you. So, if you don’t want to mess around with them yourself, using MailPoet gives you an easy way to get started – more on that later

1. Be aware of the Google mobile popup penalty

For desktop visitors, popup opt-in forms are an incredibly popular tactic, so it’s easy to think that you can port this same strategy over to your mobile visitors.

Unfortunately, that is not the case for one big reason – Google’s mobile popup penalty.

Put simply, if you make it difficult for users to interact with your content after they click on it in Google’s search results, that will negatively affect your SEO rankings. Or, in Google’s words:

January 10, 2017 update: Starting today, pages where content is not easily accessible to a user on the transition from the mobile search results may not rank as high.

Basically, if a user clicks on your site in Google’s mobile search results but needs to interact with a popup before they can interact with your content, that’s going to hurt your rankings.

If you’re using MailPoet to create your mobile opt-in forms, you don’t need to worry about the popup penalty because we’ve designed all our forms to avoid issues. We’ll cover this more later on when we show you how to create a mobile opt-in form with MailPoet, but here’s the basic idea…

Let’s say you use MailPoet to create a popup opt-in form. For desktop visitors, the form displays as a modal lightbox popup. Visitors need to interact with the form to get back to your content, either by filling it out or closing it:

However, on mobile devices, that same form will appear stuck to the bottom of the screen. It still kind of looks like a popup, but the key difference is that it doesn’t interfere with the user’s experience. Even if the user doesn’t interact with the opt-in form, they can still scroll and interact with content. Because of this key difference, you won’t get into any trouble with Google’s penalty:

2. Limit form input fields

Limiting the number of form fields that you have is generally a good practice for boosting opt-in conversion rates, but this is especially true for mobile visitors where typing in form inputs isn’t super user-friendly.

Basically, you want to keep your opt-in forms as short as possible – ideally just a single email field, or a single name field on top if you want to collect additional contact information.

3. Experiment with form types

On desktop, you have a lot of different options for opt-in form placements. You can do popups, slide-ins, notification bars, welcome mats, and more. On mobile, your options are a little more limited because of the Google popup penalty and just generally the limitations of small-screen touch devices.

However, that doesn’t mean you don’t have options, and it’s worth experimenting with different types of opt-ins. You can even find more mobile-friendly ways of implementing those common desktop tactics.

For example, the “welcome mat” is a popular email opt-in tactic for desktop visitors, but it doesn’t really translate well to mobile visitors. Backlinko gets around this limitation by creating an opt-in form in the header that takes up the full screen on mobile devices.

It kind of feels like a welcome mat/full-screen filler, but it’s in a much more user-friendly package (and there’s no popup involved). All visitors need to do is scroll down to access the full content – they’re never “blocked” like they would be with a full-screen filler on desktop:

You can also still play around with tactics such as two-step opt-ins. For example, OptinMonster still uses a two-step opt-in even for mobile visitors. The key, however, is that the “popup” still doesn’t block the user from interacting with the content (remember – you want to avoid the Google mobile popup penalty):

And for one more example, check out how WooCommerce uses a sort of two-step notification bar. As with the other tactics, it doesn’t interfere with users browsing the content. But if users click the button on the email prompt, it will open the actual email opt-in form:

4. Make your submit button touchable

As a mobile user, it’s super frustrating to be trying to submit a form only to “fat finger” the submit button and mess something up (sometimes resulting in losing the form data – yikes!).

In all the examples above, you can see one common principle – a big, fat, easy-to-click submit button.

According to research in this study, which I found in this UX Movement article, the optimal button size for users is around 60 px, with a bare minimum of 12 px spacing between the button and other clickable elements.

So when designing your mobile opt-in, make sure your button hits around that sweet spot so that users don’t run into any issues submitting your forms.

5. Pay attention to typography

Along with the size of your form’s buttons, typography is another important consideration for making your forms mobile-friendly.

Let’s start with size…

In general, 16 px is a good minimum font size for your mobile opt-in forms. Any smaller than that and it might be difficult for your visitors to read the form.

Beyond size, there are also some other important typographical considerations to make it easy for your visitors to quickly comprehend your opt-in form. Nielsen Norman Group has a good discussion of this here based on research from MIT, but the basic ideas are to:

• Avoid using condensed fonts because this makes it more difficult for visitors to read text on mobile.
• Avoid using all lowercase as this also makes it more difficult.
• Consider all uppercase for important content (like your button and the headline of your opt-in) as all uppercase text resulted in the quickest comprehension. However, you shouldn’t use all uppercase for lengthy blocks of text.

How to create your first mobile email opt-in form

If you’re using MailPoet to manage your WordPress email marketing efforts, MailPoet makes it easy to create mobile-friendly email opt-in forms. Again, if you create a form via MailPoet, MailPoet will automatically implement many of these best practices to create a great mobile experience without you needing to lift a finger.

For example, you won’t have to worry about Google’s mobile popup penalty because MailPoet already handles creating a mobile-friendly design that won’t get you into trouble.

To get started, make sure to install the free MailPoet plugin and set up the basics – check out our getting started guide if you need a helping hand.

From there, here’s how to quickly set up your form…

1. Create a new form

To get started, go to MailPoet → Forms → New Form:

2. Choose your opt-in type and template

Next, you can choose the type of opt-in you want to create. For each type, you’ll also see a bunch of templates that you can choose to quickly get started. Or, you can always start with a blank form.

You can pick any form type here. Remember, MailPoet will automatically handle the mobile-friendly part for you. So even if you, say, choose a Pop-up form, you don’t have to worry about annoying your mobile visitors (remember that example we showed you in the section on the Google mobile popup penalty):

3. Customize form content

Once you choose your template, you can use the native WordPress block editor to customize all the content in your form. In addition to the native blocks, MailPoet also adds its own blocks to help you work with things like form fields and submit buttons.

If you hit any snags here, check out our help article on how to use the form editor:

4. Preview your form on mobile

Once you’ve added your content, click the Preview button in the top-right corner to check out how it looks on mobile.

By default, you’ll see the desktop preview, but you can switch to the mobile view by clicking on the mobile icon:

If you don’t like how something looks on mobile, you can always pop back to the form editor and make some changes.

5. Set up display rules and triggers

While you’re in the preview area, you can also use the settings in the sidebar to control some important behavior, such as where your forms appear. For example, you could only display this form on certain content.

You can also choose when to display your forms, including the option to enable exit-intent.

6. Configure behind-the-scenes details and publish

Once you’re happy with how your form looks on mobile devices, go back to the main editor and configure some important settings in the Form sidebar, such as which list to add subscribers to.

Then, Save your form to make it live and start collecting signups from both your desktop and mobile visitors:

Create your first mobile-friendly opt-in form today

If you want to maximize your list building efforts, you can’t afford to ignore mobile visitors. On average, they comprise about half of all Internet traffic, so they’re a valuable source of email opt-ins.

To maximize your chances of converting mobile visitors, you’ll need to pay attention to new factors such as how touchable your buttons are. You’ll also need to use slightly different formats to avoid issues such as the Google mobile popup penalty.

For the easiest way to implement those best practices, you can use MailPoet to create your email opt-in forms. MailPoet automatically makes your forms mobile responsive so that you can focus on the important stuff – like growing your website and creating awesome content for your subscribers.

Still have any questions about how to create mobile-friendly opt-in forms? Let us know in the comments and we’ll try to help!

Like other types of opt-in pop-ups, exit-intent pop-ups can be a somewhat divisive topic. Some people love them for their conversion-boosting properties, while some other people find them a bit annoying.

Where does the truth lie? Well, somewhere in the middle. Exit-intent pop-ups certainly can boost conversion rates, though not as much as some people promote. And at the same time, while poorly-done exit-intent pop-ups can be annoying, they don’t have to be annoying if you implement them well.

In this post, we’re going to cover everything you need to know about exit-intent pop-ups so that you can end up on the “done well” side of things. 

To do that, we’ll share some examples and best practices and then show you how to create an exit-intent pop-up on WordPress using the free MailPoet plugin.

Let’s get started!

What are exit-intent pop-ups?

Exit-intent pop-ups do pretty much what the name says – they’re pop-ups that appear when it looks like a visitor intends to exit the page, either by clicking the back button or closing the browser.

Other than that, they can be as aggressive or unobtrusive as you want. The “standard” option is to show a regular lightbox pop-up, but you could also go with a full-screen filler or some other implementation.

How do these pop-ups know when a visitor is about to leave the page? Typically, exit-intent pop-ups work by tracking a user’s mouse movement. As a visitor moves their mouse towards an element that would cause them to leave your site (like the “back” button”), the pop-up can detect that motion and trigger itself before the user gets there.

Some pop-up tools might also have their own unique implementations that add some twists, but most of the time it’s based on mouse movement and speed.

What can you use exit-intent pop-ups for?

Most people use exit-intent pop-ups to collect emails. It’s kind of like a “last chance” to get a visitor’s email before they leave your site.

If that person leaves your site without entering their email, you have no control over whether or not they come back. But if you get their email address, you have a lifeline to keep connecting with them and eventually bring them back to your store.

For eCommerce stores, exit-intent pop-ups have another use – they help you drive down cart abandonment. If a potential customer adds items to their cart but then looks like they’re going to leave your store without finishing their purchase, an exit-intent pop-up gives you a chance to get their email address so that you can send them a series of cart abandonment emails and hopefully get them to complete their purchase.

Do exit-intent pop-ups actually increase conversions? What the data says

Exit-intent pop-ups are a somewhat aggressive tactic for lead generation (though you can make them a lot less aggressive by following the best practices in the next section). So this might have you wondering – do they actually increase conversions?

After all, there’s no point using an aggressive strategy if it doesn’t perform any better than less-aggressive options.

Well, there are data and case studies that show that exit-intent pop-ups do work, but probably not as well as some over-eager folks would have you believe. For example, it’s doubtful that exit-intent pop-ups alone help you increase your conversion rates by 1,300% as you might see in some case studies (unless your page had zero optimization before).

However, data usually suggests that you can improve your rates by something more like 5-15%, which is still quite meaningful and worth the effort to experiment with exit-intent pop-ups.

There are also some case studies suggesting that well-optimized exit-intent pop-ups can also reduce your site’s bounce rates by convincing visitors to stick around. For example, Larry Kim of WordStream shared that WordStream was able to reduce its bounce rate from ~69% to as low as 40% when using exit-intent pop-ups.

Seven best practices for using exit-intent pop-ups

If you want your exit-intent pop-ups to be effective, there are some best practices you need to follow. Below, we’ll go through some key tips along with exit-intent pop-up examples of other sites doing things right.

Then, in the next section, we’ll show you how to put these tips into action and create your own exit-intent pop-up on WordPress.

1. Get the context right

Context plays a big role in whether or not your exit-intent pop-ups are successful and, more importantly, how annoying they are to visitors.

Imagine two scenarios:

Scenario 1: Someone lands on your homepage, clicks around a bit, doesn’t find anything interesting, and leaves.

Scenario 2: Someone lands on a blog post from Google. They read the full blog post and enjoy it. However, for this session at least, they were only interested in the content in that blog post. So, they decide to leave after finishing the post.

You can probably see where this is going…

In Scenario 1, that person is going to wonder why the heck you’re asking them to join your email list if they didn’t find anything on your homepage or landing page worth clicking on.

In Scenario 2, that person might be willing to subscribe because they already enjoyed one of your blog posts – they just don’t have any intention to read more right now.

Pinch of Yum, a popular food blogger and recipe site, does a good job of understanding this with its exit-intent pop-up. Website visitors only see the pop-up after they’ve already interacted with a recipe:

This is also especially important for eCommerce stores. For example, if you’re using exit-intent technology to reduce shopping cart abandonment, you’ll want to make sure you’re only showing it to shoppers who have already added some products to their carts.

2. Try to personalize your pop-ups

In addition to paying attention to the context of when you display your exit-intent offers, you should also do your best to personalize your pop-ups to visitors, which usually involves creating multiple pop-ups and displaying them on different parts of your site.

For example, let’s say that you have one category of blog posts that focuses on WordPress and another category that focuses on Shopify. These are pretty different topics, so having one generic exit-intent pop-up for both usually won’t be optimal.

Instead, you should create one opt-in that’s relevant to people interested in WordPress and another that’s relevant to people interested in Shopify. That way, each type of visitor gets an exit-intent pop-up that’s optimized for them.

For example, look at how WordStream displays a special offer about Google Ads on a blog post that deals with increasing holiday store revenue via, in part, a good Google Ads strategy:

3. Use an enticing/relevant offer or discount

Remember, your goal is to get someone who was going to leave your site to stick around and perform an action that you want, like joining your list.

One of the best ways to accomplish this is to, well, bribe them, so to speak. You can bribe them by making them an offer they can’t refuse.

For example, if you’re running an online store, a common strategy is to offer a special coupon code or discount code to visitors. This can also encourage shoppers to checkout and help you reduce cart abandonment.

For example, Otterbox offers a hefty $10 discount via its exit-intent pop-up:

On other sites, you might offer a free ebook or relevant free download, such as a checklist, whitepaper, or another type of lead magnet or PDF.

With MailPoet, you can deliver these offers in the welcome email that users receive after signing up via your form.

4. Focus on clear, compelling copy

With exit-intent pop-ups, you really need to present a clear, attention-grabbing CTA. After all, visitors are about to leave your site, so they’re probably not going to stick around to read some long and/or confusing copy.

Don’t confuse visitors – make it clear exactly what the offer is. If you’re giving them a coupon code for 15% off their order, put that in the headline. Make the subheading short and sweet (and clear) and use an action-driving CTA.

This pop-up from S’Well does a great job of putting the discount code front and center. It also features a clear, descriptive CTA button that promotes action:

5. Make your pop-up’s design stand out

Because people might already be planning to leave your website, you want to make sure that the design of your exit-intent pop-up stands out so that visitors can’t miss it.

Use colors that contrast with the rest of your site and consider fading your site to put the focus on the pop-up.

While the copy in this GoPro exit-intent pop-up could be a little clearer, the design does a great job of standing out with an eye-catching image that’s quite relevant to GoPro users:

6. Don’t be negative or passive-aggressive

Have you ever seen a pop-up that gives you some absurd set of choices like below?

• Yes – I want to be a smarter marketer
• No – I prefer to be an idiot who is bad at marketing

Though this trend has, thankfully, started to fall out of fashion, these types of negative, passive-aggressive pop-ups were and still are, unfortunately, all too common.

The advice here is simple – don’t do this.

Treat your readers with respect and don’t insult them. You don’t want your readers to remember your website as the site that made them feel bad.

It’s ok to use a positive opt-in phrase as a persuasion tactic – just don’t be rude with the opt-out phrase. A better formulation of the example above might be something like:

• Yes – I want to be a smarter marketer
• No – I’m not ready to join yet

Tim Ferris has a good example of how to do an opt-out right – there’s nothing passive-aggressive about the opt-out on his exit-intent overlay, it’s just a simple declaration of fact:

7. Make it easy to say “no”

Speaking of saying “no”, let’s talk about that next.

Exit-intent pop-ups are an aggressive tactic, but you can make them seem a lot less intrusive by making it easier for visitors to say “no” if they don’t want your offer.

At a minimum, make the “X” clearly visible and easy to click. You can also consider other strategies such as adding a friendly opt-out button (as we discussed above) or letting people close the pop-up by clicking anywhere outside the pop-up.

How to set up an exit-intent pop-up on WordPress with MailPoet

Now for the important question – how can you actually create exit-intent pop-ups on WordPress? Easy – with MailPoet!

If you’re not familiar, MailPoet is a WordPress email newsletter plugin that lets you collect subscribers, manage those subscribers, and send them one-off or automated emails all without leaving your WordPress dashboard.

As part of the “collect subscribers” suite of features, MailPoet helps you create your own opt-in forms, including pop-up forms that you can trigger with exit-intent.

In this section, we’ll show you how to set them up…

1. Install and set up MailPoet

If you’re not already using MailPoet to manage your WordPress email marketing efforts, the first step is to install the MailPoet plugin and run through the short setup wizard.

MailPoet is available for free at WordPress.org, so you can install it right from your WordPress dashboard by going to Plugins → Add New and searching for “MailPoet”.

Once you activate the plugin, MailPoet will launch a short setup wizard that helps you configure some important basics, such as the name and email address that you want to use when sending emails.

If you want more of a helping hand here, you can check out our full getting started guide.

2. Create a new form

Once you’ve installed MailPoet, you’re ready to create your exit-intent popup.

To get started, go to MailPoet → Forms and then click the + New Form button:

3. Choose a template

On the next screen, you have the option to choose one of MailPoet’s many pre-made pop-up templates. You’ll be able to customize all of each template’s content and style, but this helps you quickly get started with the right foundation.

When you find a template that you like, click to Select it:

4. Customize your template

Now, you should be in an interface that looks a lot like the native WordPress block editor (the same editor that you use for blog posts and pages).

You can use this editor to customize everything about your template:

• If you want to change the text, just click and type.
• If you want to change the colors/styles, click on the element that you want to change and then use the settings in the sidebar.
• To add new form fields or content, you can use the dedicated blocks. For example, if you want to also collect a person’s first name, you would add the First name block.

To learn more about the many features here, you can check out this video tutorial.

5. Set up the exit-intent trigger and targeting rules

Once you’re happy with the content and design of your pop-up, click the Preview button in the top-right corner to see how it looks on your live site and set up the exit-intent trigger. You’ll also be able to configure your pop-up’s targeting rules in this area.

Tip – you can also see how your pop-up looks on mobile devices, which is another important consideration.

To turn on exit-intent, you’ll need to toggle on the Exit-intent display option at the bottom of the sidebar settings:

For your exit-intent pop-up to work correctly, you also need to adjust the Display with a delay of setting to be greater than 15 seconds.

One other important group of settings to configure are the various Display on… settings. 

These settings let you target your exit-intent pop-ups to specific types of content. For example, you could display the pop-up on all posts or you could only display it on posts with a certain category/tag. This latter option is especially useful as it lets you personalize your exit-intent pop-ups, which is a best practice that we discussed above.

6. Configure behind-the-scenes settings and publish your pop-up

Once you’ve made your choices in the preview area, click the red “x” in the top-right corner to close the preview.

Then, use the Settings options in the Form sidebar to configure some important behind-the-scenes settings:

• Which list(s) to add subscribers to – you can create multiple lists to segment your subscribers.
• What to do after a person fills out the form – you can either show a confirmation message or redirect them to another page.

Once you’ve made those choices, click the Save button to save your settings and make your exit-intent pop-up live.

Congratulations! You just created your first WordPress exit-intent pop-up.

Other WordPress exit-intent pop-up plugins for MailPoet

In addition to MailPoet’s built-in WordPress exit-intent pop-ups, you can also find other exit-intent pop-up plugins that still integrate with MailPoet. That is, you can use one of these tools to create the pop-up while still adding subscribers directly to your MailPoet lists.

Some good options here are:

• MailOptin – freemium – you can create a variety of different opt-in forms and target them with exit-intent. You can also integrate those forms with your MailPoet lists.
• OptinMonster – paid – includes lots of targeting rules in addition to exit-intent. It lets you add subscribers directly to your MailPoet lists.
• Popup Maker – freemium (but need Pro for exit-intent) – a flexible WordPress pop-up plugin that integrates with MailPoet.
• WP Popups – freemium (but need Pro for exit-intent) – another popular/flexible pop-up plugin that you can use to add subscribers to MailPoet.

For even more options, check out the full list of MailPoet plugin integrations.

Create your first WordPress exit-intent pop-up today

If you implement exit-intent pop-ups well, they can help you boost your site’s conversion rates with minimal impact on your visitors’ user experience.

In this post, we’ve shared some best practices to help you understand how to do that. Now, you’re ready to turn them into action.

To get started with your first exit-intent popup on WordPress, install the MailPoet plugin today and follow the tutorial above to launch your pop-up.

Pop-ups, slide-ins, and fixed bar forms should all be part of your lead generation strategy.

In this guide, I will walk you through the basics of creating successful email signup forms:

• What they are
• Signup form best practices
• Things to avoid
• Tools you can use to create email signup forms
• How to create an email signup form with MailPoet

By the time you’re finished with this article, you’ll be armed with the strategies and tools you need to get website visitors onto your email list.

What are email signup forms?

Email signup forms are the forms used to gather email addresses and other basic information about potential leads. Every email marketing service provides built-in form building capability. There are also specialized lead generation programs like OptinMonster.

Types of email signup forms

There are four main types of lead generation forms: embedded forms, pop-ups, slide-ins, and fixed bar forms. They all have the same goal—to get you more email subscribers—but they accomplish it in different ways.

Embedded forms

If you’re collecting subscribers already, you’re probably doing it through an embedded form. These email signup forms are coded directly into the layout of your website, like this signup form on my Business for Authors site:

You can choose to keep an embedded signup form on one page of your site or to put it in your header and/or footer so it shows up on every page.

When to use this form type: On a newsletter landing page or any other page explicitly advertising your newsletter. Embedded forms can also be placed at the ends of blog posts. After all, if a reader finished your article, they’re probably interested in hearing more from you.

Pop-up forms

Pop-up forms have long been the most controversial type of email signup form because of their intrusive nature.

In the past, pop-up forms opened as a separate browser window. Modern browsers don’t allow for this, so pop-up forms now appear as an overlay that covers your content, like this pop-up on Blogging Wizard:

Users are then forced to enter their email or close the pop-up if they want to continue reading your content.

Pop-ups can be annoying, but they are also effective. According to Modern Marketing Partners, pop-ups have a success rate of 3%. This seems insignificant until you consider that it’s three times higher than the success rate of a passive signup form at the end of your content.

Today’s pop-ups can also be given custom triggers. For example, you can program a pop-up form to appear when people have scrolled down a certain percentage of a given page. This allows you to make your ask after you’ve provided value to your audience, making them more open to it.

When to use this type of form: Pop-ups are the most intrusive email signup forms, so you want to display them to an audience who already understands your value. This means setting your pop-up to appear when a visitor has interacted with your site in a certain way, such as having scrolled down 75% of a page.

Another good time to use pop-ups is when people attempt to navigate away from your website. According to Conversion Sciences, this strategy can “save”10-15% of “lost” visitors.

Slide-ins

Slide-ins are similar to pop-ups, appearing in front of your content so people can’t ignore them. The main difference is that they slide into view on your page. They’re also less obtrusive than pop-ups, as they’re smaller and don’t often appear in the center.

In fact, many appear as a small box at first, like this slide-in on the Sleeknote site:

The viewer can then choose to expand the form by clicking on it.

Slide-ins are programmed to appear when certain behavior is completed, such as scrolling down a certain amount of the page.

When to use this type of form: Like pop-ups, slide-ins are best used when your audience is already engaged. You want them to appear when someone has gotten far enough into your content to understand its value.

However, the less intrusive nature of these forms makes them less likely to be effective when people are attempting to leave your site.

Fixed bar forms

These email signup forms, also known as floating bar signup forms, are embedded in a small bar across the top of your site. This bar stays at the top of the page as your reader scrolls down, which is why it is considered “fixed”.

Fixed bar signup forms are great because they’re always visible to your audience. They’re also less intrusive than slide-in or pop-up forms.

This type of form isn’t only for email signups, either. Many sites like OptinMonster use a floating bar to encourage account creation:

When to use this type of signup form: Fixed bar forms should exist on any page where your viewer is likely to do a lot of scrolling. In fact, it’s not a bad idea to use a fixed bar form on every page of your site.

Email signup form best practices

1. Create a killer offer

Everybody’s inbox is crowded. In fact, people send and receive an average of 121 business emails per day. This makes them pretty reluctant to join new email lists. If you want their information, you’ll need to give them something they can’t refuse.

There are many different incentives you can offer new subscribers:

• Coupon for your products or services
• One free product or service
• Free trial of a product or service
• Access to an exclusive ebook or report
• Printable worksheets and/or workbooks
• Downloadable checklist
• Enrollment in a free email course
• Digital art (to be used as desktop or cell phone backgrounds)
• Access to a specialized resource library
• Exclusive video content
• Enrollment in a live webinar or other free training

Of course, these are only the most popular options. You can give subscribers anything that’s relevant to your business. For example, if you sell knitting supplies, you might offer a downloadable pattern for an easy knitting project.

The key to success with this strategy for email signup forms is to offer something with real value to your audience. Your offer should help them save money, give them the knowledge they need to solve a problem, or provide them with tools that can improve some aspect of their lives.

Many blogs do this by compiling their best content into an ebook. Another blog I write for, Revive.Social did this with their most useful articles about Instagram:

This method also gives your site a higher level of authority, since you now have a published book in the world.

2. Use multiple email signup forms

You want to give your audience multiple opportunities to subscribe as they explore your content. At the bare minimum, there should be a signup form at the top of the page and another one at the bottom.

One site that uses multiple email signup forms well is DIY MFA. There’s a signup bar directly above the fold asking you to “Join Today”:

Scroll down a bit further and you’ll see another signup form embedded in the sidebar. This form also contains more information about the signup gift offered to subscribers.

There’s also a slide-in form that appears if you reach the bottom of the page and start scrolling back up.

The variety and placement of these email signup forms ensures that visitors can easily subscribe to the DIY MFA newsletter at any point in their exploration of the site. When they decide they trust DIY MFA enough to share their email, they don’t need to scroll far to do so.

3. Craft the perfect call to action

The call to action is the “ask”, the moment you request that your audience takes an action, such as subscribing to your newsletter.

Successful calls to action share three characteristics:

• Clear wording
• A reference to why people want to take this action (in this case, to access your subscriber offer)
• Prominent placement

In other words, your audience should be unable to overlook or misinterpret the call to action.

Check out this signup form from the Live Write Thrive blog:

This form is great because it has three calls to action.

The first, “strategize your writing career”, reminds readers of why they came to the Live Write Thrive blog: they want to become successful authors.

The second sentence is also the second call to action. Here, you’re told to sign up for the newsletter in order to receive updates from CS Lakin and a free ebook. This is great because it outlines exactly what subscribers can expect.

The third call to action is the button at the bottom of the form. Instead of going for a generic phrase like “Join now” or “Subscribe”, the button says “Click here to get your free ebook”. This once again reminds viewers of the subscriber offer, and the wording is unambiguous.

4. Use a landing page

One of the most effective ways to market your newsletter is to create a landing page for it. This is an entire page of your website dedicated to promoting one aspect of your business, in this case, your newsletter.

Landing pages are essentially separate from your website, with no top menu connecting to other areas. This keeps your audience’s focus on the product or service you are trying to sell, or in this case, give them. You can place a sitemap at the bottom, but many landing pages only link to the signup page for the content they’re trying to sell.

You can include your signup form directly in the body of the landing page, as Microsoft has done with this webinar landing page:

You can also create a popup form that opens when people click on a link or button. HubSpot has done this with their Business Networking Crash Course.

You can use a tool like Unbounce to build a landing page quickly and without using any code.

Once your landing page is created, market the heck out of it! Link to it in your social media and guest post bios, run ad campaigns for it, and ask subscribers who have enjoyed your content to share it too. Linking directly to this page instead of, say, the home page of your website, is a great way to ensure that viewers’ attention is directed to your email list.

5. Use social proof

You can talk about your own brand until you’re blue in the face, but it will never be as effective as sharing a one-sentence testimonial from your customers.

How to get social proof for your email list

When it comes to a signup form, there are two things you want to demonstrate social proof for: your signup offer and the content of your newsletter itself.

You can ask for feedback in any newsletter, but the best strategy is to create automated emails requesting testimonials at specific times. For example, if you want to get testimonials about your signup offer, you can set up an email to send two weeks after signup.

Make sure your emails are 100% clear about the type of feedback you’re looking for and what you plan to use it for. You may also want to offer an incentive, such as a 10% off coupon for your store, to encourage more people to respond.

How to use social proof in email signup forms

Social proof can be used in a variety of ways depending on the type of form you’re working with:

• Pop-up forms give you enough space to feature multiple one-sentence testimonials or one longer review.
• Slide-ins offer the right amount of space to feature a single one-sentence testimonial along with your pitch.
• Landing pages are a great place to share your entire collection of testimonials.

Some email marketing tools also let you show a subscriber count in your signup forms. This isn’t helpful when you’re first starting out, but boasting 1,000 or 5,000 or an even higher subscriber number makes you appear more legitimate. If you have a good number of subscribers, this is a great way to spruce up embedded and fixed bar forms.

6. Use a double opt-in

Raw numbers aren’t as important as having a clean email list. Bots and uninterested users increase your email bounce rate, which increases your chances of being marked as spam or even kicked off of your email marketing service.

Double opt-ins help you avoid these problems by confirming your audience’s interest twice: once in the form itself and once in an email. Even better, most email marketing tools let you enable a double opt-in with a simple checkbox during the form creation process.

7. Test, test, test

Best practices are important, but every audience is different. To really know what works for your audience, you need to test everything. Try different calls to action. Experiment with a variety of offers. Change the placement of your embedded forms. Alter when your pop-ups or slide-ins appear.

However, you don’t want to make these changes on a whim. The key to successful testing is a methodical approach. You want to change one element of one form and leave it in place for several weeks, tracking changes in the subscriber rate on that signup form. You also want to pay attention to demographics trends that might suggest a shift in your audience.

Most email marketing tools track the number of signups each form receives. MailPoet users can find this information in the “Forms” area of the plugin:

Demographics, however, are not usually displayed in the signup form analytics. To figure these out, you’ll need to do a little extrapolation based on the overall demographics of your list and the percentage of new subscribers gained from a particular form.

If you want a tool that offers detailed analytics on individual signup forms, consider a lead generation plugin like OptinMonster.

A/B testing

A/B testing displays the original version of a piece of content to a portion of your audience (usually around 50%) and a modified version to the rest. You can then track the success of each version to determine which is most effective. This is an incredibly efficient way to gather data, but it is not available through all email marketing services.

Things to avoid

There are several common mistakes people make when designing email signup forms:

• Asking for too much information – Every required information field creates more work for your audience. Keep things simple by only requiring an email address and maybe a name. (Some exceptions may apply, such as retail outlets requiring location information so they can send users local sales.)
• Hiding the signup form in the footer – By this, I mean having the only signup form in your footer. This does put the form on every page, but it also means people who don’t scroll down the whole way won’t see it. If a blog post gets a lot of comments, it will effectively make the signup form invisible.
• Using a bad color scheme – Your email signup forms should match your site aesthetically and be easy to look at. Be careful with contrasting colors, especially font colors.
• Making the font too small – Small fonts are hard to read on mobile screens and inaccessible to people with visual impairments. Use at least 16pt font.

Tools for creating email signup forms

There are two main options for creating newsletter signup forms: email marketing tools and lead generation tools.

Email marketing tools are the programs used to send email marketing campaigns, such as MailPoet. These tools usually offer visual drag-and-drop signup form editors and access to some form templates. Some of these tools are only capable of creating certain types of forms and/or lack advanced settings like timed pop ups.

MailPoet’s form builder, which I’ll take a closer look at in the next section, lets you create pop-ups, slide-ins, fixed bar forms, bottom-of-page forms, and signup widgets that can be embedded anywhere. The plugin also features a large collection of form templates created by professional designers.

Lead generation tools like OptinMonster are specialized tools for creating signup forms and landing pages. These tools provide form template libraries, visual form builders, advanced analytics, and A/B testing.

Some lead generation tools, including OptinMonster, also offer advanced targeting features like Geo-Location Targeting. This makes it possible to create personalized signup forms for various demographics within your audience.

How to create email signup forms with MailPoet

Finally, let’s take a look at how to create lead generation forms in MailPoet. These step-by-step instructions are specific to the MailPoet plugin, but most signup form editors work in a similar fashion. Once you’ve mastered one, you can easily transition to another.

To get started, go to the “Forms” area of MailPoet and click the “+ New Form” button near the top of the page.

This will take you to a page where you can choose the type of form you want to create. You’re automatically set to “Pop-up”, and the first two templates are displayed above the fold.

Note that the “Widgets” option is what you’ll click if you want to create an embedded form.

Once you’ve chosen the type of form you want to create, you can view templates for that form type. MailPoet currently offers around a dozen templates for each type of signup form and is set to significantly expand their template library in the coming months.

Click the “Select” button in the box displaying your preferred template to open the form editor.  

The MailPoet editor for email signup forms consists of two areas. On the left side is the visual editor, where the form is displayed. You can use the drag-and-drop functionality of this area to change the placement of content blocks.

The right side of the form editor is a sidebar where you can configure how your form works. This initially opens on a Settings area where you can edit the form title, what list(s) subscribers are added to, and the text displayed when somebody signs up.

To modify the form’s appearance, click “Styles” in the sidebar. This will open a menu allowing you to change a variety of settings:

• Background color and/or image
• Font family
• Font color and size
• Border color
• Success message color
• Error message color
• Close button style

This makes it easy to ensure that your form aesthetically matches your WordPress theme and brand aesthetic.

The next area of form settings is “Form Placement”. You can use this area to configure settings related to the form type. You can configure a single signup form to appear as several different form types. This makes it easy to use the same copy and settings for multiple form types but will complicate things when it comes to tracking the success of each form type.

When you choose a form type, you’ll be prompted to enable those form settings. You’ll then be given the option to adjust settings like form size, what pages the form appears on, and how many seconds must pass before the form appears. Pop ups can also be set to appear when someone attempts to leave your page.

To add content blocks to your form, click the “+” button at the top of the editor. A dropdown menu will appear, displaying the types of blocks you can use. MailPoet lets you add text, images, lists, custom HTML, and custom information fields.

There is no limit to the number of blocks you can add, but a brief signup form is always better.

You can edit the content of an individual block at any time by clicking on it. The settings for that particular block will appear in the right sidebar.

When you’re satisfied with the appearance of your form, click “Save” to publish it. Note that you must assign the form to a list in order to save it.

Final thoughts on email signup forms

The most carefully thought out email campaign in the world can’t make up for poorly designed newsletter signup forms. If you want to grow your email list, you need to be strategic in how you use email signup forms:

• Use multiple form types, including pop-ups, slide-ins, and fixed bar forms
• Take advantage of unique features offered by certain form types, like the option to make pop-ups appear when visitors try to leave your site
• Create a subscriber offer that your visitors can’t pass up
• Build a landing page and market it relentlessly
• Use social proof in forms and especially on your landing page
• Use a double opt-in to encourage list cleanliness
• Test everything you do; use A/B testing when possible.

These best practices will help you turn your hard-earned website visitors into subscribers.

Have you tried the MailPoet form editor yet? Sign up for a free plan.