Grow Your Email List with Targeted Sign Up Forms on Your Blog

If you use an ebook or another type of lead magnet to incentivize people to subscribe to your email list, you want to get the most out of it. After all, you put a lot of time and effort into creating that beast, and you want to make sure it’s living up to its full potential.

Aside from simply promoting your lead magnet using a sign up form on your website, you can also use it in other areas where you’re currently driving traffic.

One place that’s worked well for us (which we think will work well for you, too!) is… our blog.

Sharing Your Lead Magnet on Relevant Blog Posts

To enhance the experience our blog readers have with our content – and to hopefully get them further down the marketing funnel as they enter your lead nurturing plan – we decided to test the use of slide-in forms on specific, relevant blog posts.

Our hypothesis was that people who read specific posts on our blog are interested in that topic and would likely be more primed to download a related longer-form piece of content. So instead of simply placing a sign up form on our blog to download our ebook incentive (which would display for all blog visitors), we wanted to target our message to specific visitors who would find the information more relevant to them and their current needs.

To do so, we decided to create two different slide-in forms (these are the kind that slide on to either the left or right side of a web page) using the sign up form tool, AddThis. While there are a number of cool features that drew us to this particular choice, the fact that it integrates with AWeber was a major plus. This meant that as soon as someone entered their email address into an AddThis form, all of their information would be automatically moved into our email list in AWeber.

Our Forms

In each form, we promoted a different lead generation piece: either our email writing course, or our getting started with email marketing PDF guide.

For both of the forms, we set them up so they would appear on specific blog posts that were relevant to each of the incentives. If a blog post talked about creating email content, for example, the AddThis form with the email writing course would appear when readers reached the end of the post.

If a post focused on setting up specific aspects of an email strategy (such as creating a sign up form), or why email marketing is important, the AddThis form promoting our Growing Your Business with Email Marketing guide would appear.

The result? Hundreds of new subscribers to our email writing course and getting started guide.

The Recipe for Effective Sign Up Forms

As with any sign up form you create, you want to make sure your copy is as clear and convincing as possible.

So to test out what resonated best for our audience, we ran a couple of A/B split tests with our forms.

TL;DR version: People like numbers. Forms that mentioned either a listicle or a free giveaway had higher conversion rates than those that didn’t. Also, be as specific as possible when explaining what people will get in return for signing up to your list. Instead of saying they’ll get a freebie, tell them what that freebie will be (i.e., an ebook or templates).

Test 1: Number of Templates vs. Length of Course

The Test: For our form that shared our email writing course, we wanted to know if people responded better to knowing that the course was only 7 days long, or that they would receive over 20 free email content templates.

Test A read, “Free Email Writing Course: Write Better Emails in 7 Days.

Test B read, “20+ Free Email Templates: Simply fill in the blanks, then copy and paste the content into your emails.”

The Winner: The form with the headline “20+ Free Email Templates” had an 82 percent higher conversion rate than the form that focused on the length of the course.

The Takeaway: If there’s a specific benefit your audience will gain from your incentive, try focusing on that in your sign up form headline. (Even better if you can tie a specific number to it!) The more you communicate the value of your incentive, the more your readers will understand why they should download it. 

Test 2: General Incentive vs. Specific Incentive

The Test: When promoting our getting started guide, we looked at whether it would be more impactful to present it generally as a “download,” or specifically as an “ebook.”

Test A read, “Free Download: How to Grow Your Business with Email Marketing.”

Test B read, “Free eBook: How to Grow Your Business with Email Marketing.”

The Winner: The form with the headline that mentioned the ebook had a 32 percent higher conversion rate than the headline in test B.

The Takeaway: People want to know exactly what they’re signing up for before giving away their email address, so be clear about this in your sign up form.

Increase Traffic to Your Own Lead Magnets

Growing your email list shouldn’t have to feel like a huge burden. Take a look at the channels and incentives you already have, and think about how you might be able to repurpose them and capture traffic you already have in new ways.

If you have an incentive like an ebook or email course, try targeting your promotion of it in new relevant places on your blog. You never know what might happen as a result!

How are you making the most of content you’ve created? Tell us about in the comments below, or send us a tweet @AWeber!

The post Grow Your Email List with Targeted Sign Up Forms on Your Blog appeared first on Email Marketing Tips.

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