In today’s video I’m going to show you how I’ve increased my email opt-in rate to 62%, with one simple change I made to my landing page.
So you can model that if you want to, and get more people to subscribe to your mailing list.
Table of Contents:
The Standard Conversion Rate
A question I hear all the time is “what’s a good conversion rate for email opt-ins?”.
This is something that varies widely from industry to industry, according to a study conducted by WordStream, the average landing page conversion rate across all industries is just 2%. While the top landing pages are converting at 11%.
So, what does this mean for you?
Well, if you run an ecommerce store, you can probably expect a very low opt-in rate. And that’s ok, because it’s more than likely that people visiting your store aren’t coming there to hand over their email address in exchange for something, so it all balances out.
But if you’re in the information business, like a blog, where people expect to get extra stuff from you for free, then your conversion rate is probably going to be a lot higher.
Test, Test & Test Some More
Have a look at this.
Here we are in the WordPress dashboard on one of my websites. And there you can see today’s conversion rate is 78% but that’s not what I want to show you, so you can ignore that. What I do want to show you is this. Have a look at all these conversion rates ok.
Each one of these is an opt-in form, on a landing page that I’ve been testing. I think there are probably around 10 pages here, and each one is testing something different.
And the only number that really matters here is the conversion rate of each opt-in form. I mean we can pour as much traffic as we like on any of these landing pages but the only thing we need to be concerned with is the percentage of people subscribing to the mailing list.
Let’s go through it. Let’s find out what works.
They’re Wising Up
Now, the best strategy, my number one tip I can share with you is, to have a genuine reason for asking for an email address. This is something nobody is really doing because we’ve been told that the best way to build a list is to just offer an ethical bribe, a lead magnet, in exchange for the email address.
And it is, but we have to start changing how we frame it.
I’ll give you an example ok. Everybody’s offering a lead magnet, right? Practically every blog you see has got one. But think about it, do people really need to give us their email address, just so they can download a PDF document or watch a video? No, they don’t.
So what we’ve been doing is breaking their normal activity of surfing the web, clicking from page to page, and we’re forcing them to go to their inbox, wait for the email, so they can click a link, which just takes them back to a page on the website they just left. They could have got their on their own, without the email getting in the way.
From a usability point of view, so they can get from A to B, we’ve put a massive hurdle in their way.
And this process isn’t for their benefit, it’s for my benefit, and it’s for your benefit, which is fair enough, but we’ve drawn explicit attention to that.
They know that we just want their email address, and they know that we’re holding the freebie that they want, as a sorta ransom until they give us their email address.
It’s not a great way to start building a relationship with someone. That’s why so many people use fake addresses. So what’s the solution? How do you get their email address, while making sure they don’t feel like you’re taking advantage?
Reframing The Picture
Ok, it’s really simple. We just change how the offer is presented. We give them a really good reason for using email. So we already know that just sending them a link isn’t a good enough reason.
We need to make the use of email an essential part of the chain, ok. So we do have some options here.
The first thing you could do is, instead of offering them a PDF document or video, you could offer them a short email course. So that creates a reason for you to communicate via email, right?
So on day 1 you send them PDF document number 1, on day 2 you send them a second one, and so on, for as many days as you like. What you’re doing is presenting the content in a slightly different way.
Another option you’ve got is to restrict access to your lead magnet, by putting it inside a secure area. And to access that area, they need a password. And that’s a valid reason to send them an email, so you’re giving them the password to a secure area on your site.
I’ll show you how to do that now ok, it’s really simple. So by the power of editing, I’ll transport myself from here and over to the computer where I’ll walk you through it.
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You see how easy that is? And now you’ve got a legitimate, useful reason to ask for an email address, that will probably increase your conversion rate.
It’s pretty cool right? After seeing the massive jump in the conversion rate on my own tests, I’m going to start the process of implementing this strategy on all of my websites.