Using Video for Opt-In Forms
There are lots of places and many, many ways to put opt-in forms on your website. There are opt-in boxes that pop-up, drop-down or stay in one place. Go snoop around the Internet. Look at what and how others are using opt-in boxes. Think a bit on the subject and decide for what you think would work best for you.
The first thing you should think about is this: what exactly do you want your website visitors to do when they get to your site? In a the best of all possible worlds, they would come to your site, click through a few pages, choose the what they want and click the “buy now” button. Tada! Problem solved! The problem is that it isn’t a perfect world — not even close. Market research has determined that a visitor will hit a site anywhere up to seven times before they actually buy anything on the site… if the ever make a purchase at all.
Then there is the other major problem with the imperfect world of Internet Marketing. Web surfers have a famously short attention span. You actually get about five seconds to grab their attention before they click away. That’s not a lot of ticks on the clock.
Let’s say that you are trying to sell dog houses. A shopper goes looking for businesses that sell dog houses. They find your site, along with a few hundred other sites also selling dog houses. How are you going to sell this shopper a dog house and do it in five seconds? The answer is obvious: you aren’t, except in a ridiculously small number of cases. You may well eventually sell him that dog house but don’t kid yourself that you’re going to do so in five seconds, and probably not before he has visited your site several times.
So, what to do? The answer is your opt-in email list! The very first thing that your visitor needs to see is a conspicuous opt-in box that promises to help him find what he is searching for, and to provide him with the information to help him make a good decision… that would be your opt-in form. In our example where they’re looking for dog houses, your opt-in might offer a 5-page report on “What to look for when buying a dog house” as a free gift for subscribing. Thankfully, many visitors will at least subscribe given the right “bribe” and then it’s up to you to provide them enough value on the mailing list that they are inclined to buy from you later when you make a pitch via email.
There are plenty of options for autoresponder services to use for communicating with your list once you have built one, and nearly all the autoresponder services provide assistance with creating your opt-in forms. Still, you really ought to investigate the more advanced options for signups to your optin email lists like lightbox popup opt-in forms or . When you get right down to it, your opt-in form is the crucial component in the signup process, so you want to get the best one you can.
