There’s something special about a great, personalized newsletter. It engages the reader, makes them think, and even encourages them to take action to solve problems and achieve their goals. Where our social media marketing is often broad and more impersonal, newsletter marketing provides an opportunity to create personalized content that meets our audiences where they are.
But if we’re not providing an incentive to subscribe to that newsletter and stay on that list, we miss an opportunity to create personalized, relatable connection with our customers and prospects.
Many of our customers use Ninja Forms add-ons to collect email subscribers for a variety of email service providers including Mailchimp, Campaign Monitor, Constant Contact, MailPoet, AWeber, Emma, EmailOctopus, CleverReach, ConvertKit, and ActiveCampaign.
Using Ninja Forms to encourage email subscribers adds greater capabilities for subscriber engagement and a more elegant solution than standard forms.
Newsletters are gaining in popularity, and that means that your site visitors see newsletter subscription forms everywhere. As an online marketer, providing unique value for your newsletter signups is critical. Luckily, Ninja Forms add-ons provide numerous tools to provide your subscribers unique value.
Here are some ideas to use those tools to encourage site visitors to invite you into that most intimate space: their email inbox.
Provide an incentive for signing up for your email list
People encounter a lot of email newsletter signup forms when browsing the internet. They may be reading an article, and even receive a popup requesting them to join a list. These types of interruptions can be annoying, so it’s important to ask: what unique value can we provide to this site visitor to get them on our list?
Some ideas can include offering:
- A generous discount on their first purchase
- A free eBook download that helps them solve a problem or achieve a goal
- A downloadable guide to doing something new
- A video explaining how you solved a problem that the customer might have
Let them know the value of your newsletter
What does a subscriber receive when they sign up? Make sure you’re clear about what you’re offering subscribers, and communicate clearly and succinctly what that value is. Your content should relate to the needs and goals of your audience.
Let them read before subscribing
Have you previously sent a newsletter that had incredibly high engagement rates? Perhaps you had more opens, more clicks, or more sales from that particular email. Use that successful newsletter as an example to show your prospective subscribers what they’ll receive. This free sample, much like a visit to the food department at Costco right before lunch, can be an enticing way to have a potential subscriber click submit on your sign up form.
Let them know how often you plan to arrive in their inbox
If you’re sending daily content, but your customers expect a weekly or monthly newsletter, you may overstay your welcome in their inbox. Let new subscribers know what to expect, and then remain consistent in that promise. You might even want to give subscribers the option to choose the frequency of your emails. The overall goal of any marketing is to establish trust with your site visitors, customers, and subscribers, and to honor that trust with your actions.
Encourage people to forward your newsletter
At the end of your email, encourage your subscribers to forward your newsletter if it’s useful for someone they know. This may seem obvious, but often it’s helpful to encourage your subscribers to spread the word, especially if there is something of particular interest to a target market that you’re trying to grow.
For example, if you just opened a new storefront in a new city, encouraging people in that city to share with their neighbors is a great way to not only grow your list for that specific demographic, but it will add that extra benefit of social proof with your subscriber’s recommendation.
Add a sign-up button to your email
Even if you’re not recommending that your subscribers share, they still might share with a friend. Adding an easy way recipients of forwarded emails to get on your list makes subscribing easier.
Collect email addresses when people sign up for an event
Ask attendees to your events if they’d like to subscribe to your newsletter to stay in touch. Again, make sure you let them know what value they’ll receive from your newsletter so they know what to expect and ask permission to opt them into your newsletter. If you’re collecting registrations for an online event, you can use the Zapier add-on to easily add your registrations from Ninja Forms to both your email list as well as Zoom registrations.
Collect interest and demographic information
When you’re marketing via social media, your advertising or social posts might end up served to a wide audience, so you cannot personalize your message. However, when you’re mailing directly to your customers, you can become much more personal with your subscribers. You can add specific information as mail merge data within the body, or even the subject line, of your email. You can address your subscriber by their first name or refer to any other information you’ve collected, whether that’s the particular page on which they completed your form, products they’ve purchased, or answers to any quizzes or surveys that you’ve done. Most email service providers provide methods for storing this information, whether in their built-in fields or within fields you’ve added. Ninja Forms allows you to collect and map those fields directly to your ESP’s systems.
When a message is personalized, it delivers six times higher transaction rates. Using Ninja Forms to collect this information will help you create better connections with your customers.
Engage new subscribers immediately with your thank-you page
Your new subscriber just invited you into their inbox, so say thank you! Make sure you replace your email service provider’s default success page with something that provides value to your new subscriber. If you’ve promised a bonus for subscribing, make sure that you provide links to your subscriber so they can get that bonus. You can also provide links to relevant content, or tease a special promotion that they’ll be the first to hear about.
Segment your list & your mailings
With the Ninja Form email add-ons, you can customize your sign up form and send specific information to your email service provider. Track where your subscribers signed up and what campaign encouraged them to connect. Research shows that 80% of consumers are more likely to buy from a company that provides a tailored experience, and 66% of consumers expect brands to understand their individual needs.
Your customers and prospects expect you to arrive in their inbox with a personalized message. Make sure that you give them a method to tell you more about themselves. Use Ninja Forms to create surveys to find out more about your customers, their goals, and what problems they’re trying to solve. You can even use Ninja Forms to score those leads.
Measure and test your sign up forms
Once you have your forms set up, make sure you’re testing their effectiveness and conversion rates. You can even A/B test your forms and use the Ninja Forms Layouts and Styles add-on to change elements of your form to see which entices subscribers better. With A/B testing, everything is fair game for a test. You can test your copy, colors, fonts, form labels, or any elements on the page.
Conclusion
We hope this post gave you some ideas for improving the conversion rates of your subscriber signup forms. Ninja Forms is proud to give you tools to nurture and cultivate the relationships you have with your customers and prospects. If you haven’t yet tried one of our email service provider integrations, we invite you to do so. You can learn more about the features of each add-on, or read documentation to help you get your subscription form set up.
And, of course, if you’d like to keep in touch with us and get notified of updates to Ninja Forms, links to our blog posts, and other helpful information, our sign up form is below.
