 7 Ways That Make It Easier for People to Say “Yes”
Research and case studies repeatedly bear out the increased response and conversion rates that marketers receive when combining direct mail with email. Whether marketers are “priming the pump” for a direct mail piece or nudging recipients into responding after it lands, the combination of the two channels is powerful.
While direct mail does not require an opt-in, email does. This means your direct mail + email strategy is only as powerful as the quality and completeness of your direct mail and email lists. So how do you get people with already full inboxes to opt in? You have to make it as easy as possible to say “yes.”
MarketingSherpa recently produced a checklist to help marketers reduce the barriers to email opt-in and make it easy for their target audience to respond. Here are the top seven items that are the easiest to implement and that give you the biggest bang for the buck.
- Limit the amount of information required to sign up. More data means better targeting and segmentation, but there is a trade-off. The more questions you ask, the more risk that people will bail.
- Eliminate all unnecessary form fields. If you do not really need it, ditch it.
- Focus on fields that increase list quality. If you are a landscaper, for example, the presence of children in the home may be less significant than how much sun or shade the yard gets during the day.
- Make less essential fields optional. Let respondents skip some fields if they desire.
- Don’t try to gather all of the information at once. Gather the most critical information up front. Then use a drip campaign to collect more data over time.
- Make the form as short and easy to read as possible.
- Remove fields that might cause anxiety. For example, asking for a phone number can be a big turn-off. If people think opting in will result in unwanted marketing calls, they are less likely to respond.
Following this simple checklist will make it as easy as possible for people to say “yes” to your opt-in invitation. Once you start building your email list, you can crank up your multichannel marketing plans.
What can we do to help? |
