How to get more email opt-ins and promote your business

A guest blog by Authority Hacker

It’s been well-documented over the years that the ROI on email marketing can be $30, sometimes even more, for every $1 spent. To hit those numbers, you have to be willing to spend money to make money, know and adore your target audience, and be ready to do a lot of testing.

Every marketing team and larger corporation spends money on email marketing. One of the many ways they perform “email grabs” is by using opt-in boxes. Did you just cringe? It’s ok. That’s a completely normal reaction.

However, you can use opt-ins and a few other strategies to promote your business and generate fresh revenue. If that sounds like something you’re interested in, keep reading to find out how to get more opt-ins.

What is an email opt-in?

To get more email opt-ins, we need to begin with what they are and how they work. Before you build a house, you need to at least understand what a foundation is and why it’s crucial to have a sturdy one.

An email opt-in is a form of permission marketing in which a website visitor provides their email address to receive newsletters, promotional offers, or other information from the site.

The opt-in form is typically displayed as a pop-up window or side panel. Usually, it includes a field for the visitor to enter their email address and a button to confirm their subscription. They often look something like this:

In some cases, the opt-in form may also include additional fields for the visitor to provide their name, location, or other contact information.

The visitor is giving the site owner permission to send periodic emails by providing their email address.

The benefits of email marketing

You may be wondering, “What’s in it for me?”

Anyone can use emails to promote their business, drive sales, and bring in new customers.

This includes new or established tour and activity businesses of any size, affiliate marketers, and tour operators and tourism resellers. Every business can benefit from this marketing tactic. So let’s talk about some of these benefits.

Newsletters allow you to send highly personalized messages to clients and potential customers and provide a medium to stay in touch with people interested in your products or services. Email marketing can also be an excellent way to build customer relationships and create a sense of community around your brand.

By understanding what customers want and need, you can make changes to your products or services that will improve the overall customer experience.

With the “what” and the “why” of email marketing firmly covered, it’s time to get into the nitty-gritty of email marketing and how you can get more opt-ins and promote your business.

6 ways to get more opt-ins and promote your business

Some of these ideas are tried and true methods of getting more opt-ins, and some are more outside of the box. Do plenty of testing to see what works best for you and your company. Let’s get started.

1. Use a quality email service

There are several email marketing services out there. ActiveCampaign is regarded as one of the best in the business. The days of using free and freemium services are over.

Quality premium services are many things, but cheap isn’t one of them. While shopping around, look for the features you want. You also want to keep an eye out for features that you think look interesting and may be worth testing in the future.

One strategy, especially if you’re on a tighter marketing budget, is to start off with a cheaper plan and then upgrade as you see fit.

2. Create a great offer

If you own a new tour and activity company or are a reseller, getting customers to hand over their email addresses can be tough. The best strategy is to give them something they want in exchange.

This exchange can be something for free, like an ebook or other type of digital merchandise that doesn’t really cost you anything.

Coupons and discounts are one of the best ways to get what you want.

Another tip is to make sure it’s relevant to your niche or business. People are coming to your website for a particular product or service. Giving them the opposite of what they want isn’t going to get you the desired results.

Do you have the authority to give things away for free? If you do, free trials of products and services, or even samples, could be enough to lure in some new customers.

Prefer something a little more competitive? Offer up a contest or giveaway. This strategy works wonders on social media. Require competitors to follow you, give them your email address, and possibly even jump through a few more hoops. Not only will customers compete, but it’s fun for everyone involved.

Unfortunately, this isn’t going to work for every type of business.

Affiliate marketers, especially, will have issues pulling this strategy off. They don’t have a lot of options as far as pricing control. But this doesn’t mean they shouldn’t use opt-ins and build an email list. If this is you, you’ll have to be a little more clever.

While you can’t control price as an affiliate marketer, your network managers will keep you abreast of deals on products and services. Use your newsletter to pass on these deals to your audience. Another strategy is to focus on profitable niches. Sometimes, people are going to buy something no matter what the price is.

3. Design attractive opt-ins

The design and placement of your opt-in boxes matter more than some people realize. Google is not a huge fan of full-page opt-in boxes that pop up as soon as the homepage loads.
Customers and people who have happened upon your website to see what it’s all about aren’t going to be thrilled by a bunch of ugly pop-ups either.

Keep it classy.

Make sure to give your audience what they want. Or at least a taste. Do it before you feed them the opt-in box.

Any decent service that lets you create and use opt-in boxes on your website will have features that allow you to size and design your efforts appropriately. One of the most important of these features is setting up the placement of your opt-in boxes. If you’ve got an email grab on your blog, let the reader scroll through half the content before asking for an email.

For instance, if they’re already halfway down the page, chances are they’re still interested in what you’re talking about and are more willing to see more content from your company via email.

If you prefer to be less invasive, you can instead add a permanent opt-in box on the sidebar of your website. Another popular placement for this is in the footer. People who enjoy your content, products, and services, or want to know more about them, will likely end up at your footer sooner or later.

Why does this matter? You want a return on your investment. The more engaged the audience is when they give you their email address, the more return you’ll see on your actual email efforts.

4. Make it easy

Unlike the giveaway or contest idea, you need to consider how easy you make it for people to give you an email address. If a contest isn’t involved and you’re trying to expand your list as quickly as possible, go out of your way to make signing up a simple process.

Don’t ask for a ridiculous amount of information. If you’re interested in email marketing, you’re opt-ins don’t need to ask for personal information like phone numbers or street addresses. You don’t need to know if they’re new or returning customers. Focus on getting the email address and that’s it. You can worry about the rest at a later time.

5. Perform A/B testing

A/B testing compares two versions of a design to see which one performs better. Typically, one version is the original (control), while the other is the variable (treatment).

The key is to ensure that only one element is different between the two versions. That way, you can be confident that any difference in performance is due to that one change. To run an A/B test, you must create two versions of your design and track how each performs.

Once you have enough data, you can analyze the results and see which version performed better.

For example, if you can’t decide which color call-to-action button to use in your opt-in box, run two variations of your opt-in on different pages and see what performs better. Try running variations on anything involved with your opt-ins or you can switch up the message, the reward for giving your company an email address, as well as placement on your page.

You may find you get more opt-ins for your ebook or discounts on informational blog posts as opposed to transactional content. Use this information to replace the opt-in box on transactional content with something different and do more A/B testing.

Think of it as crafting a marketing blade. At first, all you have is some raw metal. Then you have to shape the blade itself. Finally, you must sharpen and hone it until the edge is like a razor. But just like any blade, the more you use it, the more you’ll have to sharpen it as active use wear it down.

6. Generate better content

A well-written article or blog post can help to attract attention and drive traffic to your website. Furthermore, good content can also help build trust and credibility with your audience. In an era of fake news and clickbait, a source of accurate and reliable information is more valuable than ever.

Good content can also be repurposed and reused in different ways, giving it a long shelf life and providing additional value for your readers. Whether you’re looking to build an audience or establish yourself as an authority, better content is always worth the investment.

But how does it get your email addresses? People are busy.

They’re going to forget about your website. They’re not going to remember that awesome blog post you wrote six months ago. Chances are pretty high they’re not going to remember your company or anything about it.

Unless you email them.

Unless you tell them about the new content that’s super awesome that they need to check out.

This whole thing can get pretty cyclical if you do it right.

1. You make great content

2. You get emails

3. You send out your newsletter, and more people come and submit their emails through your opt-in boxes

4. You send out more newsletters

5. You get more and more traffic

When you combine great content with excellent email marketing, it turns into more traffic, higher quality leads, and more revenue for your brand.

Make sure you’re compliant with regulations

The General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, is a set of regulations that member European Union member states must implement to protect digital data privacy.

Under the GDPR, businesses must take steps to protect the personal data of EU citizens from accidental or unauthorized access, destruction, alteration, or unauthorized use. Companies must ensure that EU citizens have the right to information about their personal data protection rights and access to that data.

Also, businesses that process the personal data of EU citizens must also contact individuals who have questions about their rights under GDPR.

Finally, businesses that process the personal data of EU citizens must appoint a Data Protection Officer (DPO). The steps that companies must take to comply with GDPR vary depending on the size and type of business and the nature of the data processed.

All companies that process the personal data of EU citizens should take steps to review their practices and policies to ensure compliance with GDPR.

There are several other regulatory provisions in place. It depends on where you’re doing business. The US, Canada, and Australia have their own regulations for email marketing and spam. Make sure you’re playing by the rules.

In addition to compliance, it’s important to prioritize email security when trying to get more email opt-ins. Follow DMARC statistics to protect your account and avoid spamming and phishing.

Conclusion

Simply publishing great content isn’t enough. In order to get more email opt-ins and promote your business, you need to make sure that the right people are seeing your content.

You can use effective email marketing tactics to reach your target audience and get them to subscribe to your mailing list. By taking these steps, you can get more email opt-ins and promote your business effectively.

Once your email opt-ins and email marketing efforts start to reap more bookings, it’s best to have an effective online booking system in place. By utilizing an online booking software that allows your customers to book on their own at their own pace, you increase your chances of a better conversion rate and provide your customers with a seamless booking process.

For example, Rezdy’s booking software features advanced tools such as real-time availability viewer, automatic communication, and secure payment gateways. These features allow your customers to secure and finalize their bookings in a few simple steps.

Ready to harness the power of email marketing and accept more bookings? Start your FREE 21-day trial with Rezdy or book a demo with our team of experts to see how Rezdy can fit within your business.

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Thanks for reading today’s post. If you found it helpful, check out this one on the top tactics for social media booking growth in 2022.