My old friend the sign up box has taken centre stage this week. Theoretically, I’ve got people to my site and now I need to work out how to not only get them to return but how to encourage them to leave their contact information so I can market to them in the future.
A sign up box or page of some form is the answer for me and we’re (the web designer and me) are working on designs to make it look stylish to fit with the rest of the site. We are all so wise now though to signing up for things, we know that we are going to get marketed to so the question is how to lower peoples defences?
The easiest way is to offer people something of value if they sign up to your emails. It’s really important too that it is something of value. Too many times I’ve signed up to a site and the free gift hasn’t lived up to the promise.
It needs to be something that is fairly cheap in time and costs for you to put together, something that is timeless so you don’t need to keep updating it, and something that if you were a visitor to a site you would think it worthwhile signing up for.
In the same way as when we create our sites we display the benefits of what our product is and does to the potential customer so our free gift needs to promote the benefits to the visitor who is a potential customer. Above all this gift is going to be a reflection on us, on our brand so we need to keep that in mind too.
Even if we have a bricks and mortar shop or tons of commercial customers it doesn’t do any harm to find a way to potentially increase our lists of people who are interested in what we do and can keep them up to date with our work and any offers we may wish to make. You never know when a great idea is going to strike and you want to roll it out to as many people as possible or when you are going to be offered the opportunity to become an affiliate, (where you get paid to promote someone else’s product), if a potential affiliate can see you are building a list your opportunities of collaboration have just been given a huge boost.
A security note though, as we do the sign up boxes it’s a good idea to have a security code below it or on the sign up page so we can be sure it’s not spam. And to fulfil the data protection act as someone signs up your software will automatically need to send a confirmation email containing a confirmation link that needs to be activated by the person to confirm that they do wish to receive emails from you. Then another email can be sent with links to their free gift.
Notes
- What can you give away as a gift that adds value to your brand and that people can’t wait to try?
- It can be across any medium, audio, visual, written. It needs to be something that is easy for you to create and easy to distribute. You don’t want to be having to cover postage costs when you are giving something away for free.
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Living in the beautiful rural county of Yorkshire it was perhaps natural for Ruth to have an affinity with the countryside and its wildlife. Creativity is Ruth’s driving force finding an outlet in television & radio she worked for many years as producer for BBC & ITV.
However a love of photography and for being surrounded by nature called her to go back to her photography training and bring pleasure and joy to people through her connection with our planet.
Staying in the moment when taking her images allows her to experience the natural magnificence unfolding before her eyes. It is this moment of mediation, of gratitude, that she evocatively conveys through her images.
RT @TrevorCurrent: New Post: Starting A Photography Business: Part 17 – Sign Them Up https://currentphotographer.com/starting-… #photog #togs
Another thought provoking article Ruth
Marketing is something I’m slowly coming around to Ray!