A couple of months ago we met with a gentleman about his website and his biggest complaint was that few people signed up for his newsletter.
He was a plumber.
When he said that, I thought, “What possible information that could positively impact my life could I ever expect to get from, and seek out from, a plumber?”
National television networks and major market newspapers are all suffering because consumers are no longer turning to them for news, and this nice man expected people that went to his website to request some form of news from him.
I had to politely tell him he had to flush any hopes of having a lot of people click on a button that says “Sign up for our newsletter” on his site. It’s not going to happen.
The unfortunate thing is that this plumber is not alone. We see hundreds of websites with that same simple, unexciting, unbeneficial call to action: “sign up for our newsletter.”
While cultivating an email list is still one of the smartest things any local business can do, you must realize that for time-conscious internet visitors, you have to give to get. If you want visitors to give up their email address and their name, you have to offer something with a perceived value – and a generic newsletter isn’t it.
Try offering unpublicized specials if they register; people love to be the first to know something. Try sharing some of your expertise with insights they can’t find anywhere else. It doesn’t need to be repetitive content like a newsletter. It can be just one-time valuable advice. For our plumber, he may offer a special article on “The Three Things You Have in Your House that Will Dissolve Any Clog.”
As is with anything on the internet, the key is testing. Try different offers. You should have your offers set up as a goal in your Google Analytics so you can easily see which offer motivates the greatest percentage of your website visitors to give up their name and email address.
Getting contact info from a higher percentage of your visitors enables you to get more sales from your site. If you’re not doing it effectively, you’re letting a lot of potential revenue go down the drain.