Syed Naimath 9 years ago
Website owners are constantly on a fishing trip.
The greater the game, the better the online business.
But unlike actual fish, visitors voluntarily latch on to the net. They join email lists by clicking to subscribe.
Curious? Well read on to find out what could make people join email lists.
Owning a blog is like holding an auction.
Your visitors are the valuable pieces. And you, the blog owner, are the buyer.
If you don’t act fast, someone else’s email list will get that much bigger.
Your website is your price. The quicker it is offered, the more chances the visitor becomes a subscriber and doesn’t stray. In fact, a 1-second increase in load time can lead to a 7% reduction in conversion rate.
The study by KISSMetrics also finds that 40% of people stray from a website that takes more to 3 seconds to load.
Since the Panda update, Google monitors load times closely. It potentially bases a website’s rank on its loading time. There couldn’t be a clearer motivation to optimize your site.
To check the loading time for your website, use a tool like Google PageSpeed Insights, Pingdom, or GTMetrix.
Remember to optimize your page for mobile users too. If everything can’t be optimized, at least ensure that your opt-in forms load quickly and responsively.
The Law of Causality states – every cause has an effect, and vice-versa.
Clicking ‘No’ or ‘Later’ on an opt-in form that promises to give a reader an ebook about ”6 Tips to Maintain the Health of Your Cat”, could seem like it has no consequence.
That is, your visitor might not consider the missed opportunity of subscribing as too significant. The bald “No” doesn’t pen the consequences of clicking it.
If it did, the visitor’s cat would have that ebook to thank.
Jeremy Smith, conversion consultant, notes how curiosity is a crucial aspect of why people click on CTA boxes.
That is, visitors are curious about the consequences of clicking on them.
So in the example article, the CTA boxes could have read – “Yes, my cat would purr for this” and “No, my cat will never fall sick”.
The “Yes” option indicates a clear benefit to clicking – for the cat and its owner.
The “No” option – where the stakes are higher – explicitly indicates an unidentified assumption. And that can make a visitor question that assumption. It can make them review their choice to not subscribe.
That’s all the better to nourish and grow your email list.
“My site has upped my conversion rate by 81%. All thanks to Steve’s efforts.” – Hank R.
A testimonial like this says very little. Who is he? Why is his comment relevant? Why should a visitor pay heed to just anyone?
Authority can be a persuasive feature in a description. It can answer those questions. Any authority, in any field, will do.
It’d be phenomenal to get Tim Ash’s quote on your content. However so will a doctor’s. Or an industrialist’s. Or a fellow blogger’s.
If “Steel Industrialist” was added after “Hank R.”, that’d state the needed authority. It can make a reader think, “It was useful to someone who is productive, so it must be worthwhile.”
Kathyrin Millard, Professor of Creative Arts at Macquarie University, says the inferences from Millgram’s Authority experiment was wrong. What we can take away from it is not that everyone has sheep-brains. What’s to take away is why people are influenced.
The conditions for persuasion must be right. Like the presence of a doctor who’s words can be taken reliably, because he must know more. Just anyone commanding the subjects would never have been as effective.
A free gift is a cherished gift.
A free gift that’s useful, is a treasured gift.
A free gift that’s useful, and samples your character as a blogger, is a converting gift.
It might seem like an unnecessary waste of effort. It might seem like a loss – to simply give away the fruits of your labor.
But it is an investment. Take the case of 7/11’s Slurpee giveaway. The 24-hour chain store gave away 4.5 million slurpee drinks on its birthday.
A huge loss?
No, Slurpee’s sales rose by 38% that day. And that, is the power or giveaways.
Offering something free let’s readers know that you mean well. That you want to help them enough to spend hours working on a gift for them. It lets them know you are symbiotically seeking their audience.
Give the reader’s a taste of your particular work. Personalizing your gifts gives them a motive to specifically subscribe to you.
Also, not all giveaways are equally attractive. Some presently in-demand giveaways are: video downloads, e-courses, strategy guides, webinars, ebooks, and the like.
Pace and spread out your gifts to ensure readers open your emails, and/or come back to your website. Dropping free gifts from time to time can also build a genuine liking for you as a solutions-provider.
An emotion is a physiological response to a thought.
To be more particular,
“There can be no […] causeless emotion. An emotion is a response to a fact of reality, an estimate dictated by your standards.
-Philosophy, Who Needs It
But why should someone be emotional over your site?
Solely for your sincere efforts. Solely because you’ve done your best to gather and/or provide information. It is information that the reader especially wants.
A proper, emotionally stimulating copy relies on identifying why your content is worth reading. Specifically, on how it was made, and what its use is.
In a recent study, Harvard Business Review looked at 30 of the top 100 images as by Reddit.com. They found the following emotions to be most common in viral content. The list is as follows –
While writing your copy, ask yourself if it elicits any of these emotions. In fact, consider the list to be in no particular order.
A sincere copy describing your content can be more thought-provoking than adjective-laden stories.
And sincerity, to echo Aristotle, is the “desirable mean between state between the deficiency of irony or self-deprecation and the excess of boastfulness.”
The above reasons are only broad categories of reasons – reasons as to what can make a visitor take the leap and subscribe to you.
Next to reading your visitor’s minds, there’s still hope towards knowing why people join email lists.
Remeber to split-test elements of your page, participate in the comments section, and keep up-to-date with new blogging developments. Interact with, and evaluate your readers often and in detail.
Keep in mind that the best way to know what your visitors and subscribers want, is to maintain a good relationship with them. One such means of knowing, is to simply ask.
It is the closest thing to telepathy.
Why do you think visitors can be willing to be subscribers? What strategies worked for you , based on your observations? Let us know in the comments below.
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