Creating Effective Opt In Boxes That Convert… »

This is nothing new… you’ve heard it said a billion times… “the money is in the list“.

I can say that you can make a good bit of money without a list (a site of mine makes almost $2k a month with a list of just over 100 subscribers)… but an email list (or mailing list also!) is another asset that you can leverage big time to create more revenues and repeat customers/visitors to your site.

Like I mentioned, you don’t NEED a list to be successful… but a list makes it a whole lot easier to be successful and keep your readers and customers coming back time and time again.

Before you go out and throw up your Aweber or Getresponse (or whoever else) autoresponder code… read this article to get a few pointers on how to increase opt ins just a bit. FYI… I have both Aweber and Getresponse accounts and like them both… really Aweber is probably the one I’d tell people to use… but Getresponse does the job too.

Throwing Up An Opt In Box On Your Site

First of all, if you aren’t collecting email subscribers to a newsletter on your site (no matter what kind of site you have), you should start doing it today.  Even if you throw up a crappy opt in box and get 1 subscriber a week (as I did when I first got started)… that’s better than nothing!

Here’s what you need to do:

1. Head over to Aweber or Getresponse (they are the most widely used by Internet Marketers) and sign up for an account.  Once you’re in there, follow their directions to create an opt in box that captures just the Firstname and Email address (or just email… I’ll discuss later).
2. Take the code that they give you and, if you’re using Wordpress, go to the “Design” tab, then click “widgets”, and insert a “text box” in the right sidebar.  Paste your code into there and save it.

That’s the easiest and quickest way to get an opt in box up and running.  It might not be the prettiest… but it’s done and you are now at least ready to start collecting opt in subscribers.

I’m not going to go too much more into any technical details of how to do it… I’m going to cover other things based on a quick change that I made to one of my websites.

Making Your Opt In Box Appealing… and Boosting Conversions

As you might know, I finally got done launching the new design for a real estate investing website that I run (I am a real estate investor also… this site is actually what got me started in internet marketing).  I like Wordpress so that’s what the entire site is built from.

Anyhow, in the previous version I had an opt in box that looked like this:

This isn’t a bad form… but it didn’t produce a very good opt in rate.  You’ll notice that I give many benefits of what people will get by opting into my newsletter… had that “nice” red arrow drawing the eye over to the form… but it just didn’t produce the results I was wanting.

I’d love to tell you the conversion rate on this form, but I really have no clue (I know, a cardinal sin in internet marketing).

Then, we relaunched the new site design and updated the opt in box with a few elements that have shown a huge increase in opt ins (like… more than 500%!!).

The New Opt In Box - And Results

Instead of the same tired looking opt in box on every page of our site, I decided to mix it up a bit and vary the placement/look of the opt in box in different places in the site.

Here’s the new opt in box on our home page:

The home page opt in box is placed in the middle of the home page right at the bottom of the fold (I wanted it above the fold but it just didn’t work out that way… I’ll have to do some tweaking to the set up of the page.

Here’s the new opt in box on our article pages:

This opt in box is placed in the TOP of the right sidebar of all of our article pages.  It is of course ABOVE THE FOLD and really stands out to the eye.

Here’s the new opt in box on our blog home page:

Okay, for the blog I wanted the opt in box to be ABOVE THE FOLD also and be right in the middle of the page so people had to look right over it to see the articles below.  It’s right next to the “popular articles” section and is very prominently placed in the structured of the blog.

The Elements Of An Effective News Letter Opt In Box To Increase Conversions

There are a ton of elements that go into an opt in box that can make it convert more effectively.  I’m not a guru in opt in box creation (I actually made these ones myself… I’m not the greatest graphic or coding guy at all).

Here are a few elements I integrated that I think are leading to the 500% increase in opt in rate almost overnight.

• It grabs the eye much better - This opt in box has the nice medium thickness RED BORDER, the big red arrow, and the nice “eye candy” to draw the eye over.  If you don’t draw the eye over to the box the chances people will voluntarily navigate over there go down.  Think about those annoying inflatable things they have on car lots or in front of cell phone stores that move and draw your attention.  Same thing… first you need to get the attention… then give them something they want.
• Eye candy - Eye candy is the stuff that makes the opt in box look cool and professional.  I used the image of the software box and free report (to show that the things they are getting are real… and of higher value) as well as the big red arrows to jazz up the box and make the offer present as a higher value to the prospect.
• Give Them Something Specific - In the past I’ve tried to just get people to opt into my newsletters by telling them benefits they’ll get and things they’ll learn.  For me, that just didn’t work all that well.  What works well is by giving people something specific (the software and ebook downloads free) in exchange for their email address.  Imagine going into a restaurant and reading a menu that said “you’ll be satisfied, it’ll taste good, our price is good, and you’ll walk out happy”… but didn’t give you specifics on the food that you’ll actually get?  That would be weird huh?  How likely would you be to actually make an order?  Probably not too likely.  People like specifics, and like to know what they’re getting (exactly) before they make a move.

  So, give people a free report, an audio download, a piece of software, etc. that is of REAL VALUE and that could be sold on it’s own if you weren’t giving it away.

• Use Our Preprogrammed Colors - I’m not all that sold on my choice for the use of the red submit button.  But, with this button… I have it programmed to turn green when someone hovers over the top of the button (head over to the site to check it out in action).  With our society the color green means go… and people are more apt to gravitate toward taking a specific action when they are given “permission” to go with the green color.

  I’m going to test out using a different color as the default color (other than red) to see if it makes a difference… but I’ve seen in other tests that the color red w/ a green color change upon hover works well.  We’ll see after I get done testing.

• Make It As Easy As Possible For Them - It’s been a debate recently among internet marketers whether or not it is better to collect firstname and email… or just email.  Technically, all we really need is their email address to send to them; however, the firstname helps us to personalize the message to them… which is pretty darn effective as well.   But, I put in just the email so it would be as easy as possible for people to submit.  They only have to enter one thing and click submit… and don’t need to fret over giving their real name… or making up some fake name (like a lot of people do).

  Some people argue that the firstname is necessary… I disagree.  While the firstname is good to have, you can write very personal emails to people that give your personality that don’t include their name.  Think about it… when you’re writing to your close friends, do you start the email with their name?  I don’t.  Also, having their firstname can backfire sometimes… like when people put in a fake name… their last name… their firstname in all capitols, etc.

  What’s worse, writing an email full of your personality and not including their name?  Or writing an email that starts with, “Hey VERIONICA,” or “Hey asdfatl,”?  I’d venture to say that I’d rather put no name at all than blow my cover and SHOW THEM that this message isn’t personal at all.

Revamp Your Opt In Box Today

Okay, that kind of gives you a good idea of what you can implement in your own opt in boxes today to squeeze some more subscribers into your list.  Sometimes the smallest changes can be huge (like my 500% increase in opt ins)… sometimes it may be small.  But, changes might only take an hour to do and will feed extra customers into your funnel every day of the week forever.

If you need any help getting your opt in box up to snuff… let me know and I’d be glad to give you a few pointers.  I’m not accepting any new clients until the end of August because of my workload on my own projects and the clients I already have… but if you have a project you want me to look at quickly let me know.

Chat soon!

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