The newsletter sign-up forms are commonly used as a strategy to collect new emails, attracting new subscribers to your communication channels. 

Moreover, this is the perfect opportunity to get permission from the users, allowing you to legally send commercial emails to them.

However, they must be effective, in a way to convince this new audience to complete their registration. A little bit of creativity may be required when you are writing and designing newsletter sign-up forms.

The best way to boost your creative process is to look at some kind of inspiration. That’s why we decided to share a few examples of these emails. Here, you will find inspiring ideas to be used in the elaboration of newsletter sign-up forms, facilitating their elaboration.

You can explore the ideas that better fit your business and the target audience you want to attract. You are free to make some adaptations as well. We really hope to be helpful to your marketing team. Enjoy!

• Offer an incentive on your site to the newsletter sign-up
• Explain to subscribers all about what they will get after the sign-up
• Keep the newsletter sign-up form attractive and visible on your site
• Give control to your subscribers in the newsletter sign-up
• Implement fields to segment the subscribers in your newsletter form
• Newsletter Sign-up: best practices to create your form
• Why is it important to implement an email verification service in your forms?

Offer an incentive on your site to the newsletter sign-up

As a business, when you want to collect someone’s email, you must think about what:

• is special about my company;
• benefits can I give to visitors if they complete filling out the registration form;
• makes me stand out from the crowd, my competitors, to be more exact;
• kind of incentives do I have?

Answering these questions will help you in the creative process, besides giving you insight into your strengths and weaknesses as a commercial entity.

If you want someone to finish a newsletter sign-up form, you have to offer something valuable, exclusive, and extremely interesting. As important as the offer, your visibility matters too. Make the newsletter sign-up easy to find on your homepage.

You won’t be able to attract many people otherwise. So, be clear and specific about your special products and services. Explain why you can make a difference in the professional or personal life of your new visitors. In exchange for email addresses, you can share:

• tricks;
• ideas;
• exclusive news;
• a special discount;
• a deal;
• a free new ebook;
• a recent study case;
• never-seen-before interviews;
• and more.

The important thing is to incentivize the new subscribers to finish filling out the registration form, making sure they won’t be empty-handed when they are done.    

Explain to subscribers all about what they will get after the sign-up

In a newsletter sign-up strategy, the worst thing you could ever do is to leave potential subscribers in the dark. From the start, the newcomers must know for sure what they will get from you and your pieces of communication.

Give a clear explanation about the approach you will have in your newsletters: relevant news, articles by specialists, testimonials, promotional sales, and other types of email. After they know the content of your messages, the next step is to get their consent.

You must remember that the subscribers must give you consent to send them commercial emails. This is something you can’t undermine, legally speaking.

When subscribers know exactly what they are going to receive from you, it’s easier to achieve higher engagement rates, avoid unsubscribe requests, and reduce spam reports. This is essential when you want to protect your email sender score and your email deliverability.

Keep the newsletter sign-up form attractive and visible on your site

Let’s suppose you had a great newsletter sign-up idea. It is attractive and compelling. It also brings many benefits to the visitor who finishes filling out the form.

However, it’s hidden on your homepage and only a few people were able to find it. This short story illustrates why you must keep the newsletter sign-up form visible on your site.

It should be located in a prominent place on your webpage. The page footer is the most common option. People often expect the form to be there, so you can explore this behavior that many visitors have. 

Using pop-up forms is also recommended, as long as you have the timing right. First, give the visitor a chance to explore your homepage and content. Don’t be in a hurry, or you will annoy people. Let the visitors connect with you before everything else.

Finally, if people are having a hard time finding your forms, it’s time to change their locations. They are not supposed to be difficult to find. Coming across them should be effortless, obvious, and quick.

Give control to your subscribers in the newsletter sign-up

Email preferences must be easy to update. This aspect has to be considered when you think about a newsletter sign-up strategy. 

People change their minds very easily, and the options they chose during the opt-in process, at the moment of the first registration, shouldn’t be final.

Subscribers must have the chance and control over your newsletters, especially when we are talking about frequency and opt-out requests.

You can elaborate a complete preference center, allowing users to edit and manage their choices. This will assure they have a positive experience regarding your messages, avoiding many spam complaints.

Implement fields to segment the subscribers on your newsletter form

It’s important to know your subscribers. You can’t sell many products or offer special services to an audience that you don’t know.

From the very first contact, you have to try to know your visitors better. By including some buttons on your newsletter forms, it’s possible to collect valuable information about them, such as gender, location, age, subjects of interest, and other relevant aspects.

This way, you can organize your email lists, which is primordial if you want to send more personalized email marketing campaigns to your contacts. Email list management is an important measure to make sure your content is delivered to an adequate audience.

When you send the right emails to the right audience, you can have more exciting results. You will not only have more engagement, conversions, and sales, but you will also have fewer spam complaints and opt-out requests.

Newsletter Sign-up: best practices to create your form

We hope these ideas get you inspired to create your own forms. Now it’s time to sit down and plan the best approach to collect new emails.

Before you do that, you should be aware of some important aspects. They will make sure your newsletter sign-up is effective and user-friendly.

Make the newsletter sign-up form simple

Filling out the newsletter sign-up form shouldn’t be complex. Instead of a long and boring form, you have to come up with something easy to understand and fill out. Think about the design aspect too, trying to make it visually attractive and engaging.

You would be surprised if you knew that many people give up filling out registration forms because of the visual aspect and amount of information requested. The simpler your form is, the more registrations you can get.

Ask only relevant information about the user, such as the most active email address the person has, and the name. You can also request relevant information to segment your email lists. 

But don’t be too curious. Simplicity is the way to go.

Be aware of GDPR and LGPD

The legislation that regulates the commercial email market has to be taken into account when you are designing your forms.

These policies make sure people have their privacy and online security protected. Considering that many people are victims of fraud, phishing, spam, and other poisonous emails, email senders must do their part.

For example, the GDPR policy makes sure users in Europe have their personal data protected. It gives people the right to know how their data is going to be kept safe, manipulated, or used. The GDPR also requests that:

• subscribers have the right to know what kind of content you are going to send before they permit you to send emails;
  
• new subscribers have the right to give informed and explicit consent;
  
• senders are not allowed to include emails on their lists because a new email has purchased something on your online stores, which means purchasing is different from subscribing. These users can only receive transactional emails;
  
• senders are not allowed to send commercial emails without explicit consent;
  
• senders can’t include pre-checked boxes in their forms. It’s up to the users to fill them, according to their preferences.

Privacy and security are aspects that can’t be forgotten when you are building your email lists through newsletter sign-up forms.

Be clear on the benefits and value of newsletter sign-up

When you want to collect people’s emails, they should be well aware of the benefits and value they can get from you.

It’s your role and from your interest to explain what is a newsletter and it benefits. Highlight the advantages they will get, starting in this first moment.

The first thing to be done is to offer them an incentive, encouraging them to fill out the form, such as a digital product (an ebook or a free trial). 

You can also give them a special discount on their first purchase. You will not only get their email but you will speed up their journey in the sales funnel.

Finally, be sincere about the value of your newsletters. Don’t lie about it (we are talking about false promises or exaggerated content), and respect the user preferences.

Use social proof to encourage concluded registration

If people are looking at a newsletter sign-up form, it means they are already aware of your brand and are probably interested in your products and sales. However, they are not ready to give you their data.

In order to encourage them, you can use social proof testimonials or expert endorsements as pieces of evidence that your brand is trustworthy. Display and highlight positive experiences that your current subscribers shared with you. 

If you work with other businesses, mention their names and exhibit their logos, adding an exclusive insight that your services are increasing their performance in the market.

Social proof is an excellent tool to make other people advertise your brand, mentioning your strengths and how your company caused a positive impact on the lives of many customers.

Use a welcome email to confirm the newsletter sign up

After the users complete their registrations, they should be welcomed through email, making sure the process was successful. Right after they are done, ask them to check their email inboxes, including spam folders and junk folders.

You can also request them to whitelist your address, making sure the next messages land in the right place.

Explore this first moment to send a series of welcome emails, introducing more details about your brand, relevant information they should know, and finally, some special offers, encouraging them to advance in the sales funnel.

Don’t forget to express gratitude as well, making this new subscriber feel welcome and comfortable when interacting with you.

Check out other newsletter ideas in this article!

Work on your CTAs

The Call to Action sentences (CTAs) must be quite straightforward. You don’t want to make the newcomers feel confused or disappointed. After they click on the button, they should be aware of what happens next, and the kind of content they will receive.

Try not to be too generic. The CTAs are a great opportunity to reveal your tone of voice, as well as your positioning as a brand. With well-crafted CTAs, the newcomers can feel they are a part of your community now.

Think about design, color, commands, font, and everything else that can be explored to make your CTAs stand out.

Want to know more about how to create a newsletter? Learn all about it!