Creating an Effective Acquisition Strategy Using Signup Forms
Forms
A good form builds a QUALITY list of subscribers.
You don’t want just to get a ton of people on your list.
Forms can also help you collect preference information. With the customer-first data you order, you can provide more value by tailoring your content to your subscriber’s preferences.
There are three primary types of forms
Pop-ups
Flyouts
Embeds
Popups are typically used to ask people to join a newsletter for the first time. They are usually more intrusive than other forms. Popup forms often have an offer incentivizing a subscription.
Flyouts are less disruptive and more often used to inform viewers about something on-site or to collect more detailed preference information.
Embeds forms are stationary forms that are placed within a page’s content.
The most common use is a website’s footer to collect email consent.
They can also be used on landing pages and elsewhere on your site.
Remember, the purpose of a form that collects someone’s email or phone number is to collect someone’s consent.
What makes a good form?
A good form comes with three principles:
Keep it simple
Design for the total experience
Collect the right data
Once you launch your form, keep track of the data for a few weeks.
If your form is converting at 1-3%, this is considered average.
An amazing signup form rate would be anything over 5%.
After, you’re confident in your sign-up form, you also want to understand how qualified your list is.
So, you’ll want to look at the performance of your
Welcome series:
Engagement with your welcome series
Conversions for messages
Anatomy of a form
Every form on your site should have a specific goal.
For example, the typical subscriber pop-up form often offers some sort of incentive for someone to enter their email. The goal is to collect the visitor’s contact information and encourage a first purchase with a discount.
An embedded form in the footer of your site also has a goal, to collect emails of those who closed your pop-up and later decided they would like to hear from you.
Both of these forms are successful at their own assigned goal because of their placement.
The pop-up is successful at collecting emails because it’s noticeable and gives the visitor value in exchange for providing personal contact information.
The embedded form is successful because it’s somewhere that’s easy to be find as visitors scroll through the site.
Matching Your Brand
Your form should match your brand and fit in with the rest of your site by utilizing your brand colors, voice, and imagery. In the example below, think about which form has a better design.
The form on the left looks more branded as the colors and fonts look cohesive, and the imagery supports 0 but doesn’t distract from the text. This one on the right is an example of a less cohesive and distracting design where the background image takes up all the viewer’s attention, makes the text difficult to read, and has mismatched fonts.
Quick tips: To help your form stand out, you can darken the rest of your site slightly with these settings until you achieve your desired look. Don’t forget to publish your changes.
Quality Imagery
Because photos are a good way to grab someone’s attention include high-quality in your forms. There are two different types of imagery you can use - photos of your products and photos that evoke the emotion behind your product. When taking photos of your products put them on a neutral clean surface that shows them off. You can have someone using your product or take a photo of the product alone.
If you don’t have access to many high-quality photos of your product or you want to vary your on-site imagery, use high-resolution photos of an emotion you want to portray with your product. Regardless of what you pock, your photos must have a purpose, enhance your form, and drive conversions rather than cluttering it.
Convincing Copy
Like your imagery, your text should be compelling and entice viewers toward the goal of your form. Accordingly, do not be long-winded. Your form should have no more than 50 words, unless entirely necessary. (This excludes any legalese you might need to comply with data protection laws.)
Within the text, make sure that your offer stands out in a larger font or color than the surrounding text. Your primary offer or incentive for completing the signup form can be the attention grabber, or in the details of your form.
Not all brands offer discounts on their products, but if you are unsure whether you should, try a/b testing including an offer in your form. Klaviyo research found that signup forms that offer a discount in exchange for an email or phone number see 90% higher subscription rates. Even better, people who view a form with a discount are 190% more likely to make a first purchase.
Commo offers promoted in signup forms include:
Discounts
Free items
E-books or other downloadables
Giveaway entries
Informational value through the content of your newsletter
Early access to product or sales
Lastly, while optional, microcopy (smaller text or above your CTA) may help soothe viewer’s fears around whether to share their email or phone number with you.
In the above example, the added text of “We promise not to spam ya” reassures the browser that they will not be spammed with emails and will only receive content that they are interested in. Make this text a smaller font size than the rest of the form as it is auxiliary to the goal of your form.
Forms and the Customer Journey
Any form a visitor sees becomes part of their customer journey and their overall experience with your brand. It’s important to consider who will see your forms and when to ensure the best experience and build a great customer relationship from the start.
The customer journey starts before they reach your site. Somehow they discovered you whether through a friend, a social media ad, or a Google search.
Depending on how they arriver to your site, you can create unique forms to tailor that experience. For example, a new visitor who arrives at your site via direct search can be shown your standard popup form so that you can connect with them in the future whereas a new visitor clicking from a paid Facebook ad could see a pop up that reiterates an offer from the ad they clicked on.
They’re already on the path to purchase and expect a certain deal, so you don’t want to distract them.
Another aspect to consider is the device they use to visit your site.
Is it via desktop or mobile?
Ensure your forms look good and are easy to use on all devices.
Whether you want one form to display on both devices or you want to create unique forms for desktop or mobile, you can do so easily within Klaviyo. Test the experience for yourself in an incognito browser to ensure your targeting is accurate and you know exactly how the form looks and feels for the customer. Is the timing right? Is it showing on the right pages? Is it easy to edit the fields or click on the buttons?
Let’s take a deeper look into targeting strategies throughout the customer journey to make the most of your site traffic.
Entrance to Your Site
There are several different ways someone can end up on your site. And your site visitors will naturally have different intentions and
How someone enters your site is impacted by what they know about your brand and how they discovered it. Let’s look at a few of the ways someone can enter your site, and how you can utilize forms to capture their attention.
Direct Traffic/Warm traffic
Direct traffic does not have any referrer or source information. This is often due to someone typing your url directly into their search bar, but can also be the result of increased organic traffic that doesn’t include referring information or platforms that don’t share referring information.
Regardless, this person is most likely landing on your home page, as not many people remember a long URL.
The homepage is a great location for your primary newsletter popup. When targeting this form, exclude your main newsletter list to avoid displaying it to current subscribers. We also recommend a time delay between one to three seconds for the popup to appear.
Organic Search
Organic search traffic is the result of someone searching either for your brand or a related keyword that drives them to your website. They might land on the homepage, in which case they’ll see your standard popup.
To take your form targeting to the next level, set your standard newsletter popup to not display on any product or collection pages using the URL targeting tools in the Behaviors tab. Then, create a new exit intent form.
For an exit intent form, make a copy of your original form and update your copy to reflect that a customer is leaving the page. Offer them an incentive to provide their contact information before they do. Set your form to only display on product or collection pages using the URL targeting tools. Remove the time delay, and set the form to display when a visitor is exiting the page.
An exit intent popup can be more effective on product or collection pages, because the customer is already on a purchase path. You don’t want to distract them by placing a popup in their way. Instead, wait until they’re leaving to provide an incentive that can encourage them to purchase, as well as collect their contact information for future communication.
Forms Beyond Acquisition
Forms are for more than building a subscriber base. They can also be used to collect preference information from existing subscribers, share an announcement, or direct visitors to a specific page on your site.
When collecting additional preference information from your current subscribers, use the Behaviors tab to target your form to only show to a specific list or segment. Because this form will only show on devices where the browser is cookied by Klaviyo, you do not need to include an email field in your form, as the properties will automatically be mapped to the correct profile.
Forms that share an announcement don’t need any fields. They don't even need a button and can use the "x" to close the form. If you use a button, set the Button Click Action to Close Form. These forms are great for announcing a site-wide sale to visitors that don’t land on your home page, for example.
Also, include words that elicit feelings of uniqueness and urgency. Below are some examples that you can use to encourage customers to complete the objective of your form.
Exclusive
Seasonal offering
Limited time
Limited edition
Don’t miss out
Going fast
Almost sold out
Additionally, you can add in a countdown timer to further inspire a sense of urgency.
Directing visitors to a URL is also a powerful way to influence a customer’s journey. You can create a flyout encouraging them to join your loyalty program and direct them to a landing page. Or you can tell them about a new collection and direct them to shop now. Or tell them about your brand values and send them to your About page or a blog to learn more. These are just a few examples of how forms can be used to provide value to both you and your customers.
Optimize Forms for Mobile
Mobile traffic is continually increasing, accounting for up to 65% of all ecommerce traffic. Klaviyo’s research indicates that 69% or more of all form views are from mobile visitors. That means if your forms don’t work well on mobile — or if you don’t have any mobile forms — you’re losing out on a lot of potential subscribers and revenue.
Depending on the design of your form, you may be able to display it on both desktop and mobile. In other cases, it may be better to create similar forms for each device. There may also be instances when it’s better to only have a mobile form. Make sure that the font is easily readable and that the CTA is easy to click.
Test the Experience
After you’ve created forms to personalize your site, test the form experience to ensure that you aren’t bombarding your browsers with popups that might negatively impact their experience.
Quick Tip: Always test forms in an incognito browser, unless your form targets a specific segment of users. If you want to test forms set to target a specific segment or list, include your own profile in the targeted group and go through each customer form experience while navigating around your site.
When optimizing your forms for mobile, always test it on your mobile device and try to submit the form to ensure all buttons are comfortably large.
Your form’s close icon should also be large enough that it is easy to close the form. No one likes it when they don’t want to fill out a form and then can’t close it. A form that is hard to close and blocks your site’s content can harm the customer’s experience with your brand.
Improving Form Submit Rate
While following principles is all well and good, after you set your form live, make sure to look at the incoming data to see if your forms are really performing well.
The average form submit rate is between 1-3%. The submit rate is calculated as the number of people who fill out a form divided by the number of people who viewed the form.
There are two levers you can pull to improve your form submit rate:
The design of your form
The audience of your form
Within form design, you can decrease how much information you request, change the tone of your message, and change the offer you provide.
There’s a wide variety of offers you can test, so use the A/B test tool to see what resonates best with site visitors.
The sky's the limit. You’ll find that some offers work better for you than others in improving your submit rate. However, it’s important to keep in mind that your submit rate isn’t the only metric you should look at to assess your form’s success. For example, a signup form offering a chance to win a trip to Hawaii may get a lot of submissions, but won’t necessarily drive any purchases.
You can also adjust the audience you target. A smaller, more targeted audience that is shown a very relevant form will have a higher submit rate because the content provides greater value.
For example, if you create a segment of customers who have viewed at least three types of cleansers without purchasing, you can offer them a free skin consultation in exchange for their email or phone number. Fewer browsers will see that form, but those who do will likely take advantage of your offer. It provides a lot of value and specifically addresses a problem they’re facing — selecting the right cleanser.
Quality Indicators for New Subscribers
Aside from your form's submit rate, look at these key indicators to gauge the quality of your new subscribers:
Engagement with your welcome series
Conversions from your welcome series
Average order value by source
Engagement with Your Welcome Series
Your welcome series is the first message or set of messages your subscribers will receive from you. It’s your first chance to wow them and encourage a conversion. If you offered a discount or promotion in exchange for their contact information, you should provide it in your first welcome series message.
When looking at the success of your form or messages, start by looking at engagement. How many people are clicking on your messages? And crucially, how many messages are bouncing or failing to be delivered?
If your form has a high submit rate but your flow isn’t getting much engagement, especially if it’s due to a high bounce rate, turn on double opt-in to prevent false email or phone number submissions. Having a large list isn’t valuable if they aren’t real contacts. You may also want to reconsider your form’s value proposition to discourage list bombing.
In contrast, if your welcome series is getting lots of engagement, that’s a sign that your form’s targeting and offer align well with your ideal subscriber.
To understand your welcome series’ engagement, head to the Benchmarks tool in your Klaviyo account to see how it ranks for all major performance metrics.
Conversions from Your Welcome Series
Getting lots of engagement with your messages is great, but getting lots of conversions is even better.
Optimize your chances of high conversions by sharing your brand story. It may seem counterintuitive to not open with your products, but this is important to relationship building. Sharing your brand story gives new subscribers a look at your history and ethos, and gives them a reason to trust your brand.
You can include user-generated content to continue building trust, and include links to shop those featured products.
Low conversion rates are often the result of a disconnect between the content of a message and the landing page. Avoid sending someone back to your homepage. Instead, send them to the appropriate product pages, categories, blog posts, or dedicated landing pages.
Average Order Value by Source
When testing multiple versions of a signup form, the average order value by source can indicate which value propositions resonate most with your subscribers.
For example, if you are testing offering a 20% off code vs. access to a consultation, it’s important to know if the added time and effort put into those consultations is worth it.
You can analyze your average order value by source by creating a custom report in your Analytics tab.
