Put Your Opt-In BELOW The Fold

In today’s Drop Dead Copy video session:

00:18 – Why you should put your opt-in below the fold.
00:39 – My friend did what most people do.
01:15 – They had to take two-steps to opt-in.
01:24 – The landing page had 1000 words of content.
02:18 – The gurus give you bad advice.
02:24 – The correct answers is “it depends”.
02:38 – The opt-in form was underneath the content, not above.
03:01 – When we made it harder to opt-in, our opt-in rate increased by over 250%.
03:41 – The gurus aren’t always right.
03:50 – We did the opposite of what gurus recommended.
04:01 – The more you tell, the more you sell.
04:12 – People aren’t convinced by a flashy website.
04:37 – If you have a sidebar opt-in form, delete it.
04:59 – Take time to articulate the value someone will receive from opting in.

Today we’re talking about opt-ins, and actually I’m going to tell you why you should put your opt-in above below the fold.

This is going to go against a lot of what you’ve been taught and a lot of what you’ve been told.

It starts with a story. I was working with a friend. My friend has a blog. You can check it out. It’s Tropicalmba.com. In the sidebar, like most bloggers, he had a little opt-in form, and the form said something like,
“Sign up to get our 50 free podcasts” and a couple of things like that. Now it didn’t really sell it. It was kind of a bit about updates. It was like the average, the typical sidebar opt-in form. That is what he had there.

So what I did, I came in and added what’s called a two step opt-in, which basically means that someone had to click on a link in the sidebar and then go to another page, and on that page that’s where they were able to opt in. So instead of it being one step in terms of they just had to add their email address to the form in the sidebar, they had to take two steps. So step one was click on the link, and step two was sign up on this new page.

Not only that, on the landing page, we added a thousand words of content. So this was copy that basically explained what they were going to receive when they signed up, why it was important to them, and the value. It really articulated the value that they were going to get out of their membership to this newsletter.

Think about it. Before there was the typical standard, typical sidebar form that almost every blogger has on their blog. We added a two step opt-in, so the after was the link in the sidebar and then a page with a thousand words of content and the form at the bottom.

Now I want to tell you what happened when we did this, because the gurus would have you believe, marketing gurus will tell you over and over and over again to put your opt-ins above the fold. I want to tell you that is straight out bad advice. In most cases, well in every single case, the correct answer is it depends.

Think about the experiment that I did in this way. I essentially made it a lot harder for people to opt in. Not only did I have a thousand words of copy on that page, the email opt-in form was at the bottom, not the top. I mean screw this above the fold business. We had it down at the bottom. Now the gurus would have you believe that this would cause a decrease in our opt-in rate, but that didn’t happen. And, in fact, get this, when we changed from the before to the after, when we made it I don’t know how many times harder for people to opt in, our opt-in rate increased by over 250%.
So instead of 10 people opting in, we had 25, and we made it harder to opt in.

Now I think there are a couple of lessons here.

Lesson one is people are smarter than we give them credit for.

If they want to opt in, they’re going to figure it out. So increasing your opt-in rate is not about making it easier to opt in. Making it easier to opt in can have the opposite effect, because it can make it seem like you’re trying to sell them on it rather than them having a free will, a free choice to choose to sign up to your list. So that’s the first lesson.

And the second lesson is the gurus aren’t always right, because that’s what happened here.

The guru advice is above the fold, make it easy, that kind of thing. We did the very opposite of what gurus recommend, and we increased opt-ins by 250%.

So I want you to keep this in mind when you’re thinking about opt-ins and forms and everything on your blog. Now, as a general rule, the more you tell the more you sell. I didn’t come up with that, but it is so potent and so true. People aren’t going to get convinced by some flashy looking banner in your sidebar. They’re going to get convinced by communication, which is copy on a page that explains to them why what you’re offering them is valuable and why you understand them, why you’re going to be able to help them. Because in the end, they don’t care about you. They care about what they’re going to get out of this newsletter.

So that’s it for today. I hope that helps. That’s some very practical information that you can use starting today. If you have a sidebar opt-in form, I strongly encourage you to get rid of it. Delete it and simply add some sort of banner. It doesn’t have to be that pretty or anything like that, but something that tells them to click here if they want to learn more about X.

I’ll do a crash course on whatever your market needs help with, and then create a page with 300 words or 500 words. The word count doesn’t matter. But take some time to articulate the value that they’re going to get for opting in to your newsletter, and then at the bottom, or wherever it seems appropriate, because that’s what I mean by it depends, wherever it seems appropriate put the opt-in form.