In the first part of this article, we went through how to configure the email campaign settings. In this final part we’ll go over how to set up your sign up (opt in) form.
In Aweber, go to the ‘Sign Up Forms’ tab and click on the green ‘Create a Sign Up Form’ button.
There’s 3 parts to setting up a sign up form. The first stage is the design of the form.
There are many web form templates to choose from. I prefer to use Basic but Pointer is also very good. I’d recommend that you remove an autoresponder self-promotion links, such as the ‘Email Marketing by Aweber’ footer link.
Also, you’ll want to change the ‘Submit’ button text to something more enticing, like “FREE Instant Access!”
Important: If you only want to capture people’s email address and not also their first name, make sure you remove the ‘Name’ field from the sign up form design at this stage of the setup.
When you’re ready, click on the ‘Save Your Form‘ button and then ‘Go To Step 2‘ to continue.
Next you will be filling in the properties of your new opt in form. The ‘Form Name‘ field can be any name you like. I like to give it the name of the location where the form will be, e.g. “squeeze page” or “blog sidebar”.
The ‘Thank Yo Page‘ options are Basic Version, Custom Page and Stay on Current Page. I prefer to select ‘Custom Page‘ which allows me to put in the URL of where I would like my new subscribers to go. This redirect URL is typically to an offer of some kind.
If you want to send your subscribers to a one-time offer, then you will need to select the ‘Custom Page’ option.
Important: Whatever URL you enter in as the Custom Page, make sure that you make a note of that URL and that when you do create your Thank You page, that you give it the same URL.
Typically I’ll leave the ‘Already Subscribed Page‘ option at ‘Basic Version‘ which will display them a message that they have already subscribed to this list.
Click on the ‘Save Your Form‘ button and then ‘Go To Step 3‘ to continue.
Your opt in form is now completed and is ready to be published. To do this, you will need to copy the code on this page and paste it on the appropriate location on your squeeze page.
There are two options for the opt in form code; Javascript or HTML. I prefer to use the HTML version because all web browsers support HTML. Some web browsers don’t have Javascript turned on which means that if you do use Javascript, there will be many that won’t see your opt in form at all!
Another reason I prefer to use the HTML code is that you can edit it on your website as needed to make changes to the opt in form.
I also prefer to uncheck the ‘Include beautiful form styles checkbox‘ (see below). This gives you a more ‘cleaner’ HTML code that won’t conflict with whatever style formatting you may already have on your website.
Congratulations! You’ve now set up your email campaign in your autoresponder 🙂
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