Although traffic is key to building a mailing list, an effective optin page (also known as squeeze page or lead capture page) is key too. Without a high converting optin page, your traffic generation efforts could go to waste.
Ideally, your optin page should convert at 30%. In other words, for every 100 visitors to your page, you should be able to capture 30 names and emails.
In order to put together a winning optin page, there are a few key elements to include.
An optin page should include an attention-grabbing headline. The headline you choose could make or break the conversion of your page, so spend as much time as you need, brainstorming potential headlines. Plus, the majority of your visitors will only read the headline and skip the rest of the copy. Usually, effective headlines include specific numbers, such as “The 7 foods that will burn fat and build muscles”. Good headlines also include big promises, such as “The 3 little-known ways to build a list without paying for advertising”.
Headlines should also include adjectives that underline how easy and fast it is to achieve the promise made. Adjectives such as “effortlessly” or “easy” or even “fastest” are often used. For example, your headline could be “The 3 fastest ways to convert leads into sales online”.
An optin page should also include a supporting image to illustrate what the person will receive in exchange for submitting their name and email. Should you be giving away a free report, include the front cover of the free report. Should you be giving away access to online videos, you could create an image of a video with the title of the video series on it. Should you be giving away documents such as check lists or templates, display an image of generic templates or checklists.
Then, also include a brief description of your offer, using a few bullet points. Each bullet point should be benefit-driven mainly, and not only underline the features of your offer. For example, instead of writing “receive 5 videos of 60 minutes each” focus on the benefits of each video. Bullet points describing an optin offer on sales training could be the following:
- Discover how to close sales regardless of your price point even if you hate selling
- Discover the absolute fastest way to get a client even if they’ve never heard of you before
- Discover how to get your leads eager to buy from you without ever using cliché and pushy sales techniques
Your optin page should also include a form to capture people’s information. Remember, the more information you request, the less likely people are going to submit their details. Requesting someone’s name and email only is usually pretty standard, and should be enough at first. Once they become loyal email subscribers of yours, you could make them optin to other offers, requesting them to submit further information. To create a form to capture people’s information, you can use email marketing softwares such as getresponse.com, aweber.com, mailchimp.com or infusionsoft.com.
These tools allow you to capture and store names and emails, and also allow you to broadcast emails to an unlimited number of people simultaneously and schedule emails in advance.
Then, below your lead capture form include a call to action. Avoid the call to action “submit” as it tends to lower the conversion rates of optin pages, as subconsciously, no one wants to “submit” their contact details. Instead, use words such as “yes, let me in”, “instant download”, “send me the report” etc…
The offer you make on any optin page should always be easy to consume. Remember, people don’t have much time, and like consuming information in the fastest and easiest way possible. Therefore, putting together a 100-page ebook as a free offer could turn people away. Instead, replace your offers with easily digestible content such as checklists, templates, 2-3 pages-long report, short videos or short audio recordings.
Lastly, include social media sharing tabs to allow visitors to share your optin page on social media. Considering that on average, each social media user has 140 contacts, this could represent a considerable amount of free traffic for you.
In order to increase the conversion of your optin pages even further, remember to add a privacy message right below your call to action tab. Privacy messages such as “100% secure”, “We will NEVER sell, rent or share your email address” or “we hate spam too and won’t share your information with anyone” is enough.
Another element that has enabled the conversion rate of optin pages to increase dramatically is the use of social proof. Social proof, also known as “informational social influence” pushes people to perform certain actions if a lot of people already have. For example, you’re most likely to optin to a free offer, if thousands of people already have, since people tend to follow other people’s actions.
Therefore, to include social proof on an optin page, you could either include a statement of how many people have already accessed your offer, such as “thousands of businesses have already downloaded this report”. Or, you could enable social media comments below the optin form, allowing a lot of people to comment on the offer.
The key of course when putting together an optin page, is not to stop at one offer. To build your list further and faster, create multiple optin pages. According to a marketing benchmarks report, companies see a 55% increase in leads by increasing their optin pages from 10 to 15.
To easily create optin pages even if you are not familiar with html, coding and websites, we recommend “leadpages”. A tool that not only allows you to pick from hundreds of high converting optin page templates but also integrates with most email marketing softwares.
Leadpages also allows you to track the conversions of your optin pages and perform “A-B” tests. In other words, leadpages can rotate between two different optin pages for the same offer, to see which one converts better.
