Optimising the Email Marketing Sign Up Process Flow

As a seasoned online marketer, you’ve mastered the basic email marketing sign up process, but have you checked how many prospects simply disappear after clicking the “submit” button on your signup form?
If you were to optimise your sign up process, more people would click that coveted “confirm subscription” link instead of disappearing.
This post highlights ways to optimise your email marketing efforts so that you get better results, and keep your prospects from falling into the deep, dark abyss.

A typical email marketing signup process flow

Before we delve into the details, here is the big picture of what a typical email marketing signup process flow looks like:

Optimising the email marketing process flow

Don’t think you’ve nailed it when the landing page, together with your hot sign up form, has been developed and integrated with the email marketing vendor.
Just when you think the cat’s in the bag, and you give a sigh of relief for another email address on your list, just like that, at the click of a finger, your prospect may still disappear into the deep, dark abyss of no return…
The danger lies between the time your prospect clicks “submit” on the signup form until they’ve clicked the link in the confirmation email.
How do you nudge your prospect over the murky waters to get them to do what you want them to do?
How do you get them to check their email, and to click the confirmation link?
How do you make sure they don’t forget about your great offer after clicking the submit form, when the tea lady comes in with cookies and a cup of milky, sweet tea?
Yes, you really can lose their interest as easily as that. With a cup of milky sweet tea and a couple of cookies.
With this understanding, when you design your email marketing process,
Ask yourself: What is the best way I can get my prospect from this:

to this:

While we’re on the topic of getting your prospect to click the confirmation email…can’t you please make them look and sound better? If you leave confirmation emails looking like the examples above, well, that’s all so boring. And insipid. And common. You get the picture…
From insipid to exciting…How about this example of Ramit Sethi’s I Will Teach You to be Rich confirmation email:

Ramit Sethi’s confirmation page adds urgency by including a countdown timer at the bottom, which is a clever psychological trick, because when we feel we’re going to miss out on something, we want it more. You can bet this small attention to detail will increase confirmation clicks.
In Ramit Sethi’s email marketing process flow, if the prospect has not clicked on “confirm my email” to subscribe, this email is sent after a certain period of time:

If you got an email like this, how likely would you be to trash it? Because it’s so unique, you’d probably feel compelled to click. And that’s exactly why it was designed. To increase clicks.
Also, notice the PS at the bottom of the email: “Don’t wait. 80% of people who confirm do so in the first 5 minutes — and the rest never see my best material.” Ramit has capitalized on the fact that most people’s eyes are drawn to a PS at the bottom of an email, so he’s added another psychological hack to encourage urgency and scarcity.
This is email marketing optimisation at its best.
He doesn’t stop there. When you confirm your email address, you’re taken to a welcome page with access to the promised material and a final Call to Action to follow him on Twitter.
Talk about making the most of a situation…

Granted, not all of us are design wizards, and we don’t have to be. But you can still make things better by keeping your end-user in mind as you design your email marketing process flow.
For instance, change the wording of your messages. This is what the setup looks like in GetResponse:

It’s not difficult to customise the message subject and message because they make it easy for you.
Let’s say you’ve offered your prospect a free website analysis, and he’s clicked on the sign up form button which says, “Get my free analysis”. Would it then make sense to send him an email with the subject line, “Please confirm your subscription”?
You’d be surprised how often this small detail is ignored by marketers. I know, because I get lots of emails with the subject header, “please confirm your subscription”, even though I didn’t click a button to subscribe to anything…
Here’s an example of an email I received after clicking a sign up button to get WordPress church plugins. This is what the confirmation email looked like:

Seriously? List? What list?
“Yes, subscribe me to this list” will not make sense to your user, because this is email marketing terminology. You and I may understand what “list” is, but your prospect doesn’t.
So change things where you can so that it makes sense to the user, not to you.
Some key points to remember:

• Make it impossible for your prospect to drop into the deep, dark abyss.
• Make the process easy for your prospect.
• Be plain, clear and concise.
• Word things in a way your prospect understands, because it’s not about you or your email lists, but it is all about them.

In summary

Most small businesses don't pay attention to the details. I can’t blame them; they have enough on their plates by managing their core offerings, and then still trying to be marketing gurus.
But paying attention to detail is what increases clicks, and if you’ve already gone to the trouble of setting up an entire email marketing process, you may as well add excellence to the mix.
In essence:

• Customise standard emails by making them exciting, clear and easy to understand.
• Think of ways you can maximise return on every single page that gets in front of your prospect's eyeballs.
• Use psychology to entice and direct.

And don't forget, the more you expect from yourself, the more you WILL excel!