How to Design High-Conversion Opt-In Offers

• Last updated September 3, 2019
• lead capture

To maximize the number of visitors to your site that you convert into leads, you need to present a high-conversion opt-in offer.

This post gives you everything you need to know to design one. You’ll discover:

• What to offer.
• How to offer it.
• How to ensure the offer is converting at an optimal level.

The most important element is something you can offer your visitors that:

• Has value for them
• Represents sufficient value so they're willing to give you their email to get it.

This is your Lead Magnet. Depending on your niche, it can practically be anything.

But first, remember why you want them to opt-in in the first place.

Match your Lead Magnet to your target market

Ultimately, you want to get them into your sales funnel so you can sell products and services to them.

You should therefore design your Lead Magnet to attract people likely, at some point, to be interested in what you’re selling.

Otherwise, while you may have people opting in, it's going to be challenging if not impossible to convert them into customers.

For example, let's say you sell a weight loss product. If your Lead Magnet relates to fitness, there may well be some cross-over, but ultimately there’s a mismatch.

Those opting in to get your fitness-related Lead Magnet are likely to have an interest in fitness-related products and services. But that’s not what you’re selling.

By promoting weight loss products to them, you'd be speaking to the wrong audience.

Firstly, they didn't raise their hand for weight loss. They raised it for fitness.

Secondly, your Lead Magnet should generally be designed to help build your authority on a topic. If your audience has built some trust in you about fitness, it doesn't mean they're going to start trusting you on weight loss.

After all, you wouldn't run a free seminar on real estate investing, with the intention of then selling a course on penny stocks. You'd attract the wrong audience, and build authority on the wrong topic.

Always ensure there’s a match between your target market and your Lead Magnet.

Once you have your Lead Magnet, you then describe this and make it available via your opt-in offer.

However, don't just have some text for your offer and then link to a form elsewhere. If you do so, you'll lose a lot of potential leads. Instead, include the form along with your opt-in offer so visitors can immediately opt in without additional steps.

(Links to opt-in pages are fine when presented in addition to other opt-in opportunities on the page—just don't make it the only way a visitor can subscribe).

Your opt-in offer doesn't need to be complicated. Keep a couple of basic rules in mind and you won't go far wrong.

WIIFM

Those who see your opt-in offer are going to be thinking, What's In It For Me?, abbreviated in marketing-speak to the acronym WIIFM.

It means you need to focus on the benefits of what you're offering, rather than the features.

Let's stick with our example of weight loss. You might have a Lead Magnet in the form of a simple 5-day diet plan.

If you purely focus on features, your headline might read, "Download our Free 5-Day Diet Plan".

But is that really what your target market are looking for?

They're not really looking for a diet plan. Their real motivation is to lose weight and feel better about themselves.

With WIIFM, you might move to a headline such as, "Lose Weight, Feel Great, In Just 5 Days—for Free!"

Which do you think is more powerful?

Your copy under the headline can then give them more information on exactly what they're getting. But the main focus has to be on the benefits.

AIDA

AIDA = Attention, Interest, Desire, Action

Yes, another powerful marketing acronym. Here's how to apply it for a high-conversion opt-in offer:

• Attention—ways to get the attention of your audience include using:
  • An effective headline.
  • A dynamic opt-in offer such as a popup or floating bar.
  • A suitable image.
• Interest—once you've got their attention, you need to retain and develop their interest. This is mainly where effective copy in your headline and other text is crucial. Imagery also plays a role. Use social proof to help build their interest.
• Desire—use effective copy to develop that interest into desire. Again, a suitable image can help. Think of before and after shots used in home makeovers, weight loss, fitness and multiple other industries.
• Action—it's crucial to now tell them exactly what to do—this is your call to action (CTA). Here are 7 principles to follow when creating an effective CTA.

For more information, see the companion post on creating effective opt-in forms.

Your opt-in form must make it quick, easy and painless for someone to opt in.

Don't request more information than you actually need. The more form fields you have, the longer it takes someone to opt in, the more potential issues they might have in doing so, and the greater the chance you will lose them.

If you require more data than just say a name and email address, you can often increase conversions significantly by requesting the additional data once you have the initial opt in.

If someone's taken the first step and filled in the initial form, they're already committed. As long as it's presented in the right way, there's often little resistance to asking them to complete a second step.

Make sure the opt-in form is problem free. It means checking the form for:

• Browser compatibility
• Cross-device compatibility—are you sure it works on mobiles as well as desktops?
• Validation issues

More information on exactly what to check for on your opt-in form and the types of conversion-killing issues that can occur can be found here.

Do you only have one opportunity for visitors to your site to opt in? Or several?

If you only have the one, it's highly likely you're not capturing anywhere near the number of leads you could be.

There will be visitors who haven't seen or noticed the offer. There'll be others for whom a particular offer and the way it was presented simply didn't resonate.

Let's say you're presenting an opt-in offer via a popup that appears within the first few seconds of someone arriving on your website.

While this type of opt-in mechanism can be effective, it will only ever convert a small proportion of visitors into new subscribers. Like it or not, the majority will simply dismiss it.

If that's the only offer you present, you've already lost them.

But once someone's been on your site a little longer, their interest may develop, and they may, to a certain level, begin to know, trust and like you.

There need to be additional opportunities for them to opt in, which might include opt-in offers:

• In the sidebar.
• In the header or footer.
• Via a Smartbar top or bottom of your page.
• Within the content on the page.
• Via a popup when they're about to leave.

(Our lead capture software makes all of this easy to do).

By presenting these additional opportunities, you're also showing your message multiple times. Multiple messaging is often essential for effective conversions.

So don't just have a single opportunity. Keep reminding your visitor of your opt-in offer, enabling them to sign up whenever they're ready to do so.

Your initial opt-in offer is only ever a starting point.

You then need to let real data take over and tell you what is going to work most effectively for your audience. That means continuously testing all the different aspects of your offer, for each instance of the offer on your website.

Otherwise you'll be restricting the number of leads you could otherwise attract.

Double your conversions

Split testing enables you to easily, and relatively rapidly, at least double the number of visitors you convert into leads and subscribers.

In fact, a single split test may achieve that (or more) all by itself.

Other tests may improve your conversions by say 20-30%. But through the power of compounding, you only need three such tests to again double your conversions overall (at 20%, 30% and 30%).

It won't all be positive. You should also expect inconclusive tests, where neither the original nor your variation were better or worse than the other.

Other tests will ‘fail’, proving that what you have already is still the best version.

Either way, you're still learning about your market, and what works best for your opt-in offers. Make a note and test something else.

Test one thing at a time

For an effective test, you’ll mostly want to test one single element of your opt-in offer at a time.

If you try testing more than one, a ‘success’ for one element can easily be negated by a ‘failure’ for another. This skews your results and blinds you to changes that could otherwise give you a substantial conversion rate increase.

What to test

Elements to test include:

• The headline.
• Additional copy.
• Use of an image.
• Button color.
• Font — the font family, size and color used.
• Positioning of the offer — where or how does it show on your site?
• The Lead Magnet.
• The number of fields.
• Button text.
• Various design elements such as the width, spacing of different elements, overall design, and so on.

And don’t just test appearance. Test behavior too. For example, do you get more conversions from a popup when it appears:

• On entrance?
• On exit
• Or maybe when the visitor’s been on the page for a few seconds already?

Finally, as well as testing elements within individual opt-in offers, test your overall approach. Do your conversions increase when you combine a Smartbar and a popup, as compared to say just the popup on its own?

Until you test, you never know. Sticking with what you assume works well, rather than what your market best responds to, is costly.

For more information on how to split test to double your conversions, click here.

To Conclude

As we have seen, designing an opt in offer for high conversions involves various elements including:

• An effective Lead Magnet that matches your target market.
• Copy and an offer design that follows WIIFM and AIDA principles.
• An opt-in form that ensures opting in is pain-free and avoids common stumbling blocks.
• Ensuring there are multiple opportunities for website visitors to opt-in, rather than just a single offer.
• An ongoing split-testing process, which over time can double your conversions or more by simply testing what your market best responds to, and adjusting your offer accordingly.

With all these elements are in place, you'll be able to maximize the number of visitors you convert into leads and subscribers.

steve shaw

Steve Shaw is the CEO of optinopoli™, next-generation lead capture and sales conversion technology—click here for more info.