Is Your Opt-In Working? How to Know

You’ve set up an opt-in freebie, created a landing page, and started driving traffic to it—but is it actually working? Without understanding what your goals are for conversions, it's hard to know. I see a lot of people guessing as to whether or not opt-ins are working or, worse yet, giving up on them too soon and starting to create a new one completely without knowing if the one they have works or not. Let's talk about how you know if your opt-in is working and how to determine what tweaks to make if it's not performing as you hoped. 

What do you Track to Know if Your Opt-In is Working?

We want to start by tracking the conversion rate for the page. Ideally, your opt-in landing page should have a conversion rate of 40% or more. That means that for every 100 people who visit the page, 40 sign up. If we can get this higher, that's great. 50% or 60% is probably the best-case scenario for an opt-in. You may have one higher than that, but in most cases, 50-60% is the high end for opt-in rates. 

How Often Should You Track Your Landing Page Conversion Rate?

I personally track my sales funnel metrics on a weekly basis. I track each step of the funnel so that I know where to focus my optimization efforts. The landing page for your opt-in should be the first step of the funnel. Keep track of it each week or month. You'll want to check your analytics to see how many unique visits the page had, and then you'll divide that by the number of sign-ups you got for that time period. That's your conversion rate for the landing page. 

How do you Troubleshoot your Landing Page Conversion Rate Issues? 

If your opt-in rate is below 40%, you will want to change your landing page and test different things until you can get the rate up. A few small tweaks may be all it takes to bump from 35% to 40% or even 50%. 

Make one change at a time and test it for at least a week. You need 100 people to go through the updated page to know if the change has helped. If you change and 50 of 100 people who see the page now sign up, you've probably corrected the problem. If 10 of 100 sign up, you've made the problem worse. 

Start with simple changes like reducing the information you request from the new email subscriber. This is generally a very easy change to make and often helps. You want to ask for as little information as possible on a signup form. If you personalize emails, you likely only need the email address and maybe the first name. I don't recommend asking for anything more on a landing page. The recommendation is to ask for the bare minimum you need on any opt-in form. If you don't need their last name, business name, phone number, etc., don't ask for it on the landing page. If they are interested in working with you in the future, you'll be able to get that information from them at the time. 

Then, make sure there's information on the landing page about what the opt-in is about. Add 3-5 bullets about what they'll get and how it will help them make the next step in their journey. Help them see how you can help them. Be sure to add an image of the opt-in document if there is one. This can help with conversions, too. Stay focused on how this will benefit them and make their journey easier. Don't focus on yourself here. This can be test #2 after you adjust the information you requested on the page. 

Finally, add some information about why you are qualified to help them. What special background do you have? Keep it short, no more than one paragraph of information. They don't care about you at this point; they just want to know if you can help them with whatever they need help with. 

What to do if your Landing Page Conversion Rate is Super Low?

If it's super low, say 10- 25%, you have big issues with your landing page. It's possible you need a completely different page, or you may have the wrong opt-in. If your landing page conversion rate is under 25%, small tweaks aren't likely to be enough to resolve the issue.

What I see work best for landing pages is the following:

• A short page with a focus on the customer and how it helps them
• A very simple, very short opt-in box that requests very little information
• A short paragraph about your background 

If your landing page is long or asks for lots of information in the signup box, that may be the issue, but you may have more issues than that if your conversion is super low. I recommend researching bigger brands within your niche. Don't ever copy them but take a look at the formatting of their landing pages and see what they're saying about their opt-ins and what information they're asking for in their signup forms. 

Use the landing pages from bigger brands in your niche as a template. Often, the bigger brands have the budget to test and optimize that we don't have as small business owners, and you can learn from studying them. You can also use landing page software to see a heatmap of where customers spend their time on your pages, but that's a more advanced strategy and probably not something to do when you're just starting out. 

Is Your Opt-In Attracting the Right Customer?

Once you know your landing page is converting well, the next step is to make sure you're attracting the right person. You want to see who's signing up for your opt-in and how they're interacting with your business. Are you generating leads and sales from your new email subscribers? Now, you won't get a ton of them, but you should get some. 

How do You Know if You're Attracting the Right Customer? 

You'll need to tag your new email subscribers, so you know which opt-in they signed up for. If you have several opt-ins, this will help you see if one outperforms the others. I do this by using a mixture of tags and lists within Active Campaign (my email service provider). Your process may be slightly different based on which ESP you use, but it will likely be similar. 

When someone first signs up for my freebie, they're added to an automation within Active Campaign so that they receive the item they signed up for almost immediately. Once they start the automation, they're tagged. I automatically add tags for the type of traffic they are (paid or organic) and the opt-in they signed up for. I have more advanced funnels with organic and paid traffic, so I can easily keep track of that. If you don't yet know how to set up different funnels for your opt-in, don't worry about that; simply tag them based on the opt-in they signed up for and start tracking opt-in performance. 

You'll want to be sure you have a nurture sequence set up for your new subscribers. I know some people teach to send emails over a course of 7-10 days, my mentor actually teaches to do it over 90. For years, I sent my email nurture sequences for 7-10 days, but I have been working to extend them to around 90 days so that new subscribers get tons of value and information from me when they first sign up. 

You want to track to see how many people are opening and reading the emails in your nurture sequence to get an idea of how well they're working. Ideally, you'd like to see a 50% or more open rate on the initial email where you deliver the opt-in they signed up for. Surprisingly, many people will never actually open the email or download the opt-in document. That's OK, if they keep reading your emails each day or every few days. Watch the open rates of your nurture sequence emails. See if there are any that are particularly high or low. You want to aim for a 30% or more open rate on the emails in the nurture sequence. Open rates aren't super reliable anymore, but they can help us understand overall if what we're creating is working for our audience. 

The final thing you'll want to track to know if your opt-in is working will be the leads and conversions for the new subscribers who came in via that opt-in. When you get consult calls, leads, or sales, be sure to take a quick peek at them in your ESP and see which tags they have. Did they sign up for the opt-in? You can calculate your lead and conversion percentages by taking the number of leads or sales / total subscribers to that list. For example, if you had 100 people sign up for your new email opt-in and 1 person bought your product, you'd have a 1% conversion rate. If 15 people bought, you'd have a 15% conversion rate. 

You'll likely see about 1-3% of your email list convert into paying customers. So for every 100 emails you add with your opt-in, expect to sign up 1-3 new customers, coaching clients, or students. If you've had 500 people go through your funnel and no one has signed up for a lead or sale, your opt-in might need to be changed. If you get to 1,000 people who've signed up for your opt-in without a sale, you definitely have an issue with your opt-in, and it's time to change. This blog post can help you find a new idea using SEO tools, so you know there's an audience for what you're creating before you start. 

If you're ready to get started and create an opt-in and build your email list, you can get the Beginner's Guide to Email List Building right here.