Email marketing can be one of the most effective forms of digital marketing. It has a fast and flexible nature, and has proven to generate return on investment for many businesses. Building a mailing list allows a company to nurture and communicate with a pipeline of leads.

Despite email marketing being one of the best ways to reach and engage with customers. Many companies struggle with getting people to sign up and subscribe to their mailing list in the first place. Many of us can agree that we’re often bombarded with marketing emails on a daily basis. So why would we want to sign up to more?

Mastering a simple email sign-up form is one of the most important and effective methods to email marketing. It also gives customers a quick and easy opportunity to opt-in to your mailing list. This mailing list can turn into a source of revenue as customers get to know you and trust you, while you stay top of their mind (or top of their inbox). So the next step is understanding what exactly makes someone sign up to an email or newsletter? Here are onefoursix’s tips on how to get more mailing list sign-ups.

Monitor your Conversion Rates

Conversion rates refer to the percentage of visitors on your website who opt-in for your mailing list. You can calculate this by dividing the number of conversions from your sign-up form by the amount of traffic to the page it’s on.

If you have a form that coverts 3% of the website visitors that see it, it is more valuable than a form converting at a rate of .75%. With 1000 visitors to your website, the first sign up form would generate around 22 more leads than the second (assuming all other things were equal). This is why conversion rate optimisation is so important.

Call to Actions

In order to generate conversions from your email sign-up form, you need to ensure it is well seen. Therefore, it is crucial to place your sign-up forms on visible pages of your website. This ensures you are putting the opportunity right in front of your website visitors. It may be useful to identify your most highly visited pages and put your forms or calls to actions on those specific pages. This may help to maximise the form’s visibility.

If you don’t have many pages with a large amount of traffic, finding ways to increase traffic may be a more worthwhile activity. As previously mentioned, conversions only happen when there’s an opportunity to convert. If there is no traffic, there aren’t any opportunities. Learn about how you can increase traffic to your website here.

Consider the appearance

You don’t want to lose out on any potential subscribers simply because they didn’t notice the form. This is why you want to draw attention to your conversion tools. Make the sign-up form bold enough to catch every individual’s attention. One way we suggest doing this is by using contrasting colours that stand out on the page. 

A second factor that is important to consider is the placement of the sign-up form. A prominent page placement can be a game-changer. It can help increase conversion rates through sign-up forms much more efficiently. A sign-up form or call-to-action can go in a number of places on your website. Here are a few…

• Top of the page
• Within the text of the page
• Sidebar
• Bottom of the page
• As a pop-up

You may want to test which placements work best to ensure successful conversion rates.

Quick process

If a visitor encounters any friction when trying to opt-in, the less likely they’ll actually sign up. You want to ensure the signing up process flows until completion.

One way you can reduce friction is by removing form fields and making the signing up process faster and more efficient. Make sure that the amount of required form fields are proportional to the amount of value you’re providing. Too many will cause the user to bounce. Therefore, ask for less up front and then collect any information you need after the individual has become a lead.

Use Pop-ups

Pop-ups may seem intrusive, but you can guarantee that they will be seen by website visitors. And that they will convert! By offering something of value, and using specific triggers, such as an exit intent, you can create a pop-up experience that isn’t annoying and successfully generates leads.

Test, test, test

Testing is one of the most important fundamentals in creating an effective and successful sign-up form. A faulty form will lose you potential subscribers, wasting all your hard work. By testing your sign-up forms and identifying  improvements, you’ll soon learn about your audience. Always be mindful about your metrics, and you can be sure to increase email signups as a result.

Start to grow your mailing list…

A lead might provide their email address for a number of reasons. Either to receive details about sales, blog post notifications, a discount code or any information about your business. This makes your email sign up form one of the most important things on your site.

So while they might seem easy and simple to create, you still need to put some time and thought into how you build, format and embed the form into your website.

Here at onefoursix, we specialise in all aspects of digital marketing. This includes email marketing. If you need any more tips or advice on how to build your mailing list, get in touch with our team today.