Typically, it involves sending newsletters to your email subscribers who consent through a signup form to receive your brand messages.
The only problem – the influx of personal and company buy telegram number list newsletters has made website visitors wary of subscribing to new ones to avoid cluttering their inboxes with marketing messages.
How do you make irresistible opt-in forms for your visitors then?
A persuasive newsletter signup form with a compelling pitch about the unique benefits your newsletters offer is a great start. Layering it with some social proof and a clear call-to-action helps even further.
Learn more about newsletter signup forms’ best practices from our marketing podcast:
Let’s explore some newsletter signup form best practices with signup examples that are high-converting as well.
Why the right sidebar isn’t the best place for email signup forms
To fight information overload on the internet, web users have trained themselves to avoid anything that resembles an ad. Given that website creators have extensively used the right-hand sidebar of a web page (also called right-rail) to show ads, users now habitually avoid looking at this area.
Referred to as right-rail blindness, it means that anything too big or colorful (like the example below) is likely to be ignored.
A colorful banner with a signup form on a healthcare website.
Alternatively, NNgroup research recommends putting text links to relevant content in the right sidebar. Here’s an example from our blog’s homepage:
An example of links put in the right sidebar of a website.
So if you’re putting a generic newsletter signup form in the right sidebar, don’t expect extraordinary conversion rates. Nerd Fitness tries to sweeten the subscription deal by offering a free ebook on 15 newbie mistakes in their right sidebar. But it’s flashy and susceptible to right-rail blindness:
NerdFitness website with a signup form with a lead magnet in the right sidebar.
If you’re in a competitive niche (such as marketing and software) where many businesses use email marketing, the right sidebar is even more likely to get ignored. For instance, data from six years ago by Devesh Khanal, a content marketer, found this sidebar converted at a dismal 0.3% for 100 views/month for a marketing blog he ran.
Graph showing the conversion rate of a signup form placed in the right sidebar – 0.3%-0.6% of 100000 monthly visitors.
For a website with fewer visitors, you can expect better conversion rates. Khanal found his business blog converting between 0.4 to 1.2%.
A graph showing a 0.4%-1.2% conversion rate of a right-sidebar signup form (out of 11000 views a month).
See how to get more email opt-ins from your blog here.
Similarly, try to avoid putting opt-ins in places where ads usually appear – such as the top of the page – or in proximity with ads. Users have learned to ignore anything that resembles ads. This banner blindness behavioral tendency results in avoidance of the top banner area as visible in this heatmap fixations of 26 people:
