Chances are you have a newsletter sign up form of some sort on our site… but are you getting any sign ups? Well, if you are not offering your website visitors some form of incentive to sign up you could be missing a lot of potential business.
Boost Email Sign-ups With These Proven Incentives
Offer Exclusive Discounts
If you are a retailer you can offer discounts or rebates. This applies to both e-commerce sites and brick and mortar businesses. Even the best products in the world need some kind of an offer to truly succeed. Don’t think of a discount as devaluing your product or service. Think of discounts as a way to get y our foot in the door. A customer who is undecided about making a purchase is often just waiting for you to make an offer. Learn to use this common human trait by approaching your website visitors with a chance to get exclusive discounts if they sign-up with their email address.
Be sure to try different ways to word your offer to keep it fresh… “half off” and 50% discount meant the same thing but sound different. Free shipping and gifts with purchase are also proven winners.
Give Away Free Information
If you are looking to generate leads for follow up sales efforts try giving away free information. Information can take the form of PDF whitepapers, case studies, invitation to free webcasts and so forth. If the content is relevant to your website and your product or service anyone signing up to join your email list can be considered a qualified lead. Plus, with free content you get to show off your professional expertise.
For example: you can also repurpose content developed for one format and use it in another format. Take that canned sales presentation you have… add a bit more useful info and work it into an online video you can offer as a free webcast or podcast.
If you are considering offereing a newsletter BEWARE. This classic online offer actually entails a lot of back end work on your part. Ask yourself “do I really have the time to devote to writing a weekly newsletter that iwll be of value and interest to visitors on my site?”. If you are strapped for time then stick with a white paper, its a lot less work! The trade off is that you don’t establish a regular schedule of communication.
Promote Free Samples or Trials
Offer to let cusomters use your product or service free of charge for a limited time. The quality of your product may end up doing the job of convincing the prospective cusomter to purchase! But even if they do not… you have contact info you can use to follow up with or cross sell other related products.
If you are running a retail operation consider using a twist on this by offereing free in-store samples, special events, or free demonstrations of your product or service.
Offer Entertainment
Don’t over do this one… but a brief quote of the day, joke, or cartoon can be a welcome diversion for people. If you can develop a theme relevant to your product or service then you might have a winner here.
Run A Contest
Running a contest with the chance to win a valuable prize can be a highly effective way to get visitors to your web page to sign up. This offer is similar in nature to the “free gift with purchase” gambit BUT with a contest you get to ffere something of considerably greater value because you are only gong to have to give away one!
Plus, if you send out notifications of new contest to your existing email file you have a great way to confirm and update the email addresses of everyone who responds.