5 tips for creating tempting sign-up forms

Customer acquisition costs have increased by over 60% over the last five years. Across the board, both B2B and B2C brands are seeing costs rise as a result of heightened competition. That means brands have to do more and work harder to encourage new customers to sign-up and subscribe to your email marketing.

Using your website as a customer acquisition tool is nothing new to the modern marketer. There is no more effective channel to recruit new customers. Whether you’re a B2B, B2C, or D2C brand, Google has made it easy for potential customers to discover your brands with a few simple keywords.

The tactics may vary. You may choose to collect customer details via download forms, pricing inquiries, or email newsletter sign-ups. However, you choose to grow your marketing database, creating a tempting form is essential.

We’ve got five top tips for you to help you create sign-up forms that are guaranteed to convert every time.

Acquire customers with enticing forms

1. Keep it simple

Just like when you’re designing email marketing campaigns, it’s important to keep your sign-up forms simple and free from distraction.

A complicated sign-up form will effectively turn-off a prospective customer. At the same time, simply collecting an email address won’t provide you with the data you need to begin building interesting engagements. Only collect vital information. Depending on your business, this could be gender, date of birth, or business sector.

You want it to be fast and simple for users to fill in the form, without it impeding their experience on your website.

2. Optimization

Timing and placement are everything when it comes to the user experience.

If you’re opting for a popover sign-up form, you should consider when is the optimum time for it to appear. Too soon and they will just exit the form without completing it. Too late and they may leave your site before they’ve had the chance to sign-up.

If you’re sticking with a traditional on-page form, where will it sit? Will it be housed permanently in your footer or will it be on specific landing pages such as download pages? The key is to make it easy to find. You don’t want to make it more difficult to find your form than to complete it.

Optimizing this stage of the journey means considering how you can make to process as smooth as possible. Doing so will increase the number of customers who convert at this point.

3. Incentivization

Being open, honest, and clear is a massive selling point for new customers.

Entice customers by demonstrating this at the point of subscription. By outlining what customers can expect from your marketing you’re giving them an incentive to sign-up.

Whether it’s a sign-up discount code or access to learning resources, when a customer knows what to expect from your marketing, they’ll be more willing to part with their name and email address. By setting these expectations early, you’ll be gaining their trust and paving the way to a long-standing customer relationship.

4. Engaging CTA

A simple ‘submit’ button isn’t very enticing. Your CTAs should reinforce your incentives. If your incentive is to get access to learning resources, you should test CTAs such as ‘get access today’.

To really drive your website visitor into action you should also think about the visual impact of your CTAs. You want them to be eye-catching, to stand out on the page, and prompt the user to act.

5. Privacy and consent

Modern customers, whether they’re shopping for themselves or on behalf of their company, are aware of the importance of personal data.

As marketers collecting data on users, you should be well aware of the importance of a customer’s privacy. By gaining customer consent and informing them about your privacy policies at the point of sign-up there will be no confusion or areas of grey about how you can use your customer data.

By going further and introducing double opt-in consent, you’re guaranteeing that prospective customers definitely want to receive your marketing. This in turn will improve the hygiene of your mailing lists as your contacts will be more engaged having re-confirmed their interest in your brand.

Sign-up forms guaranteed to convert

To ensure your sign-up forms are going to convert, you need to be testing and optimizing your tactics.

Never be afraid to try something new. Introducing popovers or trialing sign-up discount codes can help revitalize your user experience. In turn, this may be the push an undecided customer needs to finally sign-up to your email marketing.