Pay Attention: Simple Sign-Up Tweaks to Grow Your List and Gather Data

Pay attention to your sign-up form.  When building and growing your email marketing program, much of the time and energy is focused on optimizing the email creative, content, CTA, and deliverability.  However, don't neglect one of the first instances your soon-to-be subscribers have with your email marketing program, your sign-up form.  Your sign-up form helps set the tone of your (hopefully long and prosperous) email relationship.

Bronto Email Marketing Strategist Kristen Gregory, emphasized the importance of the email sign-up form through a three part series on the Bronto Blog entitled "Optimize Your Email Sign-Up," where she addressed:

1. Making sure your sign up form "stood out" and enticed!
2. Finessing the sign up form: The Format, Critical Data to Gather along with other sign-up suggestions
3. Landing Page and Welcome Message Musts

For these posts, Kristen did extensive research looking into countless email sign-up forms, and made suggestions on the placement of sign-up forms and what information they're gathering.  Kristen has since noticed that the retailers have changed their approaches on their sign-up process, let's evaluate the changes:

Stand Out and Entice

Kristen's first post in the series concentrated on "standing out and enticing" visitors to subscribe.  Earlier this year, Fred Flare placed their sign-up form near the bottom of their homepage.  Even given the large font and white background, they may have lost some potential subscribers.  Fred Flare has since updated their sign-up form, moving it higher up on their site and into their main navigation side bar.  Kudos to Fred Flare for giving their sign-up more visibility - but we'd love to see it even higher on the page or multiple instances of the sign-up form. 

Next up, ShapeFX.  In early 2010, their sign-up was at the top of the main message, spanned the full width of their site and was nearly impossible to miss as Kristen noted "adequate space around it helps you notice this CTA."  Kristen has found that they've "changed to a pink box on the right-hand side that touts their 15% coupon upon sign-up and overlays part of the homepage. I think they still do an excellent job capturing your attention here."  Keeping with a great tradition of keeping their sign-up form in front of visitors, it's still almost impossible to miss, especially as it nearly covers the main model/image.  The pink box stands out on the white background, while their color scheme (black, white, pink) is still nicely maintained.

Our final sign-up form positioning update is for JBPet. In Kristen's first post, she gave rave reviews for JBPet's multiple instances of their email sign-up from a text link at the top of their page, a banner ad on the left column and a banner ad at the bottom of the homepage.  JBPet received an "A" in our books for making their sig- up form visible and accessible.  Since Kristen's post, she's noticed that JBPet has "removed the very bottom ad, but included a call-to-action in their rotating hero image area. The last noticeable eye-grabbing image on the page is asking folks to find them on Facebook."  We love the multiple instances of the sign-up form, especially since with a rotating banner ad, not all visitors will get a chance to see it (unless they sit on the page for 30+ seconds).  The rotating banner is really pushes the savings associated with signing up which is a great way to entice new subscribers, but be wary of those just signing up for that discount.

Finessing the Form

In Part 2 of Kristen's series, she focused on the optimizing the sign-up form, giving readers guidelines for the sign-up form format, critical data to gather, along with other great suggestions to enhance the sign up form. 

We've featured Uncommon Goods on the Bronto Blog before, they have an "uncommonly good email approach" when it comes to leveraging ratings & reviews, and in Kristen's blog post on finessing the form, she gives them kudos for their simple sign-up form that leads to a longer form with more detailed questions. Kristen noted that "clearly, this scenario allows for the best of both worlds. Want to just give us your email and move on? No problem. But giving subscribers the ability to let you know what kind of message they want to receive, how often, an opportunity to receive special birthday deals and so on, sends the message that you are listening as a brand and care about being relevant." Kristen notes that recently, though "they've simplified their format and they are now only asking for name in addition to the (email) address. I like how they offer 'What's in it for me?' explanations and sample emails to persuade people to sign up - I'm just wondering if that can be better laid out."  Kristen's right, the information they list on their confirmation page is gold, all the elements you look for in a sign up:

• Privacy
• Giveaway information for an extra incentive to sign up
• "What's in it for me"
• Email Preview

Privacy is important, so that's smartly laid out at the top of the page.  The giveaway could be included in the welcome series (since many subscribers are ready to hit submit regardless) or as a way to further entice the wary subscriber to sign-up.  The "what's in it for me" is perfect to include on this confirmation page, it includes a wide range of benefits, one or many of which is bound to attract subscribers.  The email preview is extremely valuable, it provides a great way for subscribers to see what you have to offer, but is sadly at the bottom of the page.  Could they have included images of email previews within the text?  This would not only break up the block of text, but also would emphasize that Uncommon Goods' emails do include these elements.

Put your best foot forward with your email sign-up form.  Create a sign-up form that stands out, a form that gathers the information you need, and finally a landing page that falls in line with all the expectations you've set.  The landing page, along with the welcome series is your chance to engage how subscribers introduce them to your company and get them excited.  Also, don't forget to periodically make sure the sign up form is working, add a calendar reminder to check to make sure everything is still relevant and functioning.  There's a lot to the "simple sign-up" - anything we've missed?  Please comment below.

Caroline Smith
Community Marketing Manager
@Bronto