I’m using a band I recently discoverd to demonstrate best practices for a double optin process. Step by step. Watch this short video to see how it’s done.
TRANSCRIPT:
Hi! Good afternoon. This is Mitch Tarr, President and CEO of www.zinmarketing.com Today I’m going to be going through a little tip that teaches you how to make your sign up process much more effective than it probably already is.
So, I discovered this new band, “Lake Street Dive”. I really like their music, so like most people I zip over to the website first thing to take a look and see what I can see. I like the website design. It’s clean and simple. It’s very elegant. It’s powerful. Nice colors. Easy to read. I like that.
And, you can notice right away, at the top right of the page, the first thing they’ve got is a “join email” list. I would probably put a benefit statement in here, and just tell people why they should join your list. Now, I like the fact they used a “subscribe” button instead of a “submit” button.
That’s a good feature. And, I like the fact that they asked for email address only. Now, the more that you ask for is the less that you will get. And really we’re trying to get people to join our lists! I might give this list a special name and you’ll see why in a minute.
Once I hit the “subscribe” button, here is where I end up. You can see they’re using Mailchimp, and this is a generic, standard Mailchimp page. This is typically called the “Thank You” page, which is where you get to after you hit the “subscribe” button. People want to know if it worked.
So, yes it worked and it gives you some instructions, “Almost finished. We need to confirm your email address” is what it says. What I would do is use more description here. I’d tell people more about what is going on. I would tell them what to expect. I would probably, if I’m going to add an incentive in, I would reference the incentive in here. “Once your email address is confirmed you will get access to….” something that you can only get by joining. I know that I’m expecting an email, so I hop to my email, and there it is! It comes from Lake Street Dive so it’s who I’m expecting it from. And it’s using the name of the list, called “Main List: Please Confirm Subscription”.
This looks like a pretty standard message. When I go into the email message, what do I see? Yep, it’s a standard message. The name of the list is called “Main List”. I would probably give this a better name than “Main List”. I would probably rename this to something like “Insider Fan Club” or “Lake Street Dive Fan Club”. Something more personal, secretive, and insider-ish so that fans feel like they are getting something. What I have to do is confirm my subscription….again I would tell people why. I always tell people what to do and I tell them why. That always helps conversions.
So, I click on the “Subscribe me to list” and I go to the place I expect to be taken to. Again, this is a standard page. This is typically called the “Confirmation” page, and it tells you that your subscription is confirmed. If I was giving an incentive, I might put a video here that would be only a video that you can get by joining the list. I might use that at the beginning, “Join our list and see a jam session from the club that you can only see by joining our list.” I would put something here that is kind of a cool incentive.
I might give them a 25% off coupon. I might do something to incent people to get all the way through the process. The three things I would do differently here are change the name of the list, I would make the information more descriptive and probably put an incentive in, and the third thing I would do is I would make a custom thank you page and a custom confirmation page that actually are on the website.
They would be on www.lakestreetdive.com/thankyou. That’s the page I would have people go to. Or www.lakestreetdive.com/confirmation. Instead of seeing this generic Mailchimp page, people would be back on the website where they belong. You don’t want them here and to continue to the website, you want to put them there and place them there already.
So, there’s a few things you can do to make your sign-up process way more personal and way more effective.
The “Take Away” you can take from this is make sure you go through your own signup process. Pretend you’re an outsider, and just see what it feels like. Is it generic and bland? Is it personal? Is it customized? Is there an incentive in it, a promotion, something to seal the deal and get people through all of the steps?
The good news is your competition probably isn’t doing the well, so you have an opportunity here, right away, to make a difference on what is often the very first engagement. If this was the first time I saw this band, and I interacted with their website, and it could be a better experience it would more likely lead me to maybe hit the “buy” button and download some tracks, or download the music, or take a look at the upcoming tour dates. It would keep me a little more engaged than this standard off the shelf stuff.
Hopefully that helps you a little bit when looking at your own process. These things definitely do make a difference, and it will increase your conversion rate if you make your process a little bit better.
I probably wouldn’t be doing a good job if I didn’t close by letting you know that Zin Marketing does email marketing on your behalf. You can learn what we do just by clicking on the website. Or, we will teach you how to do it if you go to the No Spam Email Marketing site. There is training programs and free videos, and a program there you can learn how to do it yourself.
Thanks for following Tip 1401, and we will see you next time!