Why an Email Signup Form is Vital for Your Website (and Your Bottom Line!)

Today, email is considered the most effective digital marketing channel for increasing conversion rates, building brand awareness, and boosting acquisition. The best way to achieve this is by cultivating a solid list of readers and potential customers, and these lists must be built with an email signup form. If you’re in business online, or even simply plan to be in the future, you should be growing your email list.

Why should I use an email signup form?

An email signup form will help your company to grow a list of permission-based, engaged subscribers. The key phrase here is “permission-based.” If you form a list of everyone who has subscribed to your emails, you have a list of people who have actively given you permission to reach out and advertise your product to them. This means you can advertise directly to them essentially for free while nurturing a relationship with them and building trust.

Where do I put an email signup form?

You can place it anywhere on your website, though it’s best to place it or time it in the places where your potential customers are most likely to be willing to part with their information. You can do this:

• With a popup offer (such as a discount)
• In exchange for a free download at the end of an article
• At the bottom of your web pages
• At checkout
• To keep visitors up-to-date on future products and releases

There really aren’t any hard-and-fast rules to where and when to place your email signup form. The best time will always be once you’ve already given them some value and built up a little trust.

How do I create an email signup form?

It’s a good idea to figure out what your end goal is before you start designing your signup form. Once you’ve decided where your signup form(s) will go, you need to decide if you’re offering anything in return for sign up or not. If so, this will be sent in the resulting email sequence, so don’t worry too much about it yet.

Next, decide if you want new subscribers to confirm their subscription or not. While this may sound like a good way to lose potential subscribers who simply don’t confirm, it actually keeps your list “clean.” Remember that you have to pay for your subscribers, so you don’t want hundreds or thousands of people who will never open an email. Subscribers who agree to be on your list twice will often be more responsive to your marketing. This kind of activity will boost your sender reputation and improve your delivery rates.

At least 20% of initial subscribers will not complete the final confirmation step, so it’s worth weighing up the kind of product or service you’re offering, as well as the demographic of your target audience, before deciding whether or not to use a confirmation step.

When it comes to the appearance of your email signup page, simplicity and eye-catching phrases and colors are key. Your signup form should be customized to suit your company’s brand, but it should also be simple, quick and intuitive. You can find email signup form templates here, although it’s definitely a good idea to make one using your own language and any logos or catchphrases if relevant.

Also, ensure your call-to-action button before your sign up form (if you have one) is bright and attention-grabbing. Your click-through rate is a useful key performance indicator (KPI), and using a call to action button instead of just a click link can increase your click-throughs by 28%.

People generally respond to being addressed directly, as well as the idea that a deal or opportunity will only be available for a certain amount of time. Drive urgency using a countdown timer, add words like “get” to increase the sense that the customer is actively doing something to obtain your product.

A well-placed and thought-out email signup form will give you free contact with the customers most interested in hearing from you, helping to increase your revenue and increase the likelihood that a past customer will return.

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