HOW TO INSTANTLY IMPROVE YOUR EMAIL SIGN-UP FORM
If you are an e-commerce brand starting to dabble in email marketing — as you should btw — the first thing you should set up is your email sign-up form. This is the pop-up or fly-out form that comes across your website page for people to join your email list, as I’m sure you have seen on any other website you’ve been to.
Maybe though you’ve never thought beyond the sign-up form what happens on the brand side. It’s more than just gathering an email and sending you a discount code on your first purchase. As a brand, you now have direct access to your customers shopping behavior, in other words, you can collect & observe data based on how they are interacting with your brand and products.
So, this form is soo so valuable as a brand! But, how do you optimize & incentivize it for people to actually want to join your list, and stay on it? Today, we’re just talking about the former, but check back we’ll talk about retaining subscribers on your list at a later date!
I get this question time and time again with clients — “how do I grow my list? What’s the secret?” and truly, it does take time, care, effort and good 👏 content 👏 paired with a thoughtful strategy. But! There is one easy strategy that can instantly convert more users to join your list and that is…
A/B testing your sign-up offer.
Let’s look at to basic customer psychology…
Discounting is a pricing strategy that employs a psychological or subconscious effect on customers. You use incentive offers to influence the customer’s emotional response and in this case it’s for them to feel like joining the list and ultimately converting into buying.
We see this in pricing like $1.98 versus $2.00 when looking at items on sale or when they want to feel “cheaper”. We also see this when prices are rounded up on a luxury item like a gold ring instead of $599, $600 feels a little more luxurious and right on the money.
But back to sign-up forms!
Optimize your sign-up form by A/B testing between a $ off vs a % off discount and see how your customers react. Usually, as I’ve seen with clients again and again, one will be strongly favored over the other.
Based on customer research, scientist have come up with the Rule of 100 and it’s as follows:
A percentage discount is more appealing to customers for items under $100, such as a 10% sign-up incentive for a $100 blouse sounds better than $5 off.
On the other hand, for items over $100, people are more likely to convert when it is a $ discount, such as a $850 ring with a $50 off incentive.
I’ve found with many of my clients, (who often all fall in the over $100 category) that a $50 off incentive does the trick of converting MORE people than a 10% or even 15% off code offer.
So! I encourage you to go and A/B test your sign-up form with a $ vs a % discount and see the results — it’s super easy and can be done in a few minutes I promise you — but if you need further help, reach out to book a strategy session.
