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The following excerpt is from Susan Gunelius’ book Ultimate Guide to Email Marketing for Business. Buy it now from Amazon | Barnes & Noble | iTunes | IndieBound
It’s essential that the copy on your opt-in form excites your target audience and compels them to take action. They need to understand the value they’ll get when they give you their email addresses, and they need to feel confident doing so. To that end, following are seven things you should try to accomplish in your copy:
1. Answer the Question, “What’s in It for Me?”
An essential question that every marketing message should answer for consumers is, “What’s in it for me?” Your copy must explain the benefits your audience will get when they submit your opt-in form.
For example, if you’re not offering a lead magnet but, rather, simply inviting people to join your weekly newsletter list, what benefit do they get from subscribing? Instead of using copy that says, “Subscribe to my newsletter,” a fitness coach could use copy that says, “Subscribe now and get my weekly exercise video to keep the weight off.”
2. Describe the Offer
You must explain what people will get when they submit your opt-in form, or many of your website visitors won’t feel confident entering their email addresses. They have to feel like what you’re giving them is worth more than their email addresses. People are extremely protective of their inboxes, so be very clear in what you’re offering. In the fitness coach example above, the coach could have offered weekly exercise tips, but instead, the copy is extremely clear about what the coach is offering to subscribers—a weekly video with exercise tips.
3. Set Expectations
To boost confidence, it’s important to set clear expectations for what happens when someone submits your opt-in form. The first step is to explain how often they’ll hear from you. Will you email them weekly or monthly? Will you send occasional promotional messages? Again, refer to the previous fitness coach example and notice how the copy says subscribers will receive weekly messages. Leads know exactly what they’ll get and when they’ll get it when they submit the opt-in form. If the fitness coach plans to send additional promotional messages that are separate from the weekly video messages, they could add a phrase to the copy that…
