How to Set up an Email Marketing Campaign – Part 5: The Opt In Form

An elemental part of every email marketing campaign is the opt in form. The opt in form should be the focus of the page because this is what the squeeze page is all about… getting your visitors to enter their information into the form.

In this section I’m going to go over how to set up your email campaign, opt in form and follow-up email sequence and I’ll be doing it in Aweber. However, you can apply this to almost all autoresponder services.

Creating a New Campaign

After you log in to your Aweber account, click on ‘Create and Manage Lists’ then select ‘Create a New List’.

For your campaign settings, you’ll be asked what name you would like to call your list. Keep it descriptive of your niche so you can recognize it easily.

I like to enter my display name as * John Lagoudakis * so it stands out in my subscriber’s inbox. For the email address, it’s best to use one on your domain (and not a free gmail or yahoo email address) so it looks more professional and trustworthy.

Whatever you’re doing in your email marketing campaign, make sure it helps to build a relationship of trust.

It’s also good to enter an email address in the ‘Notifications’ area so that you know when people are opting in to your squeeze page.

Confirmed Opt In or Not?

Aweber (and some other autoresponder services) give you option to select whether you want to have new subscribes confirm their opt in. If you turn this option on, it will mean that every new subscriber will only become active on your email list after they have opened the confirmation email and clicked on the confirmation link.

I prefer to have this option turned off. This way you will have more active subscribers.

After the list settings have been configured, the next step is to set up the web opt in form.

Web Opt In Form

In Aweber, go to the ‘Web Forms’ tab and click on ‘Create a New Web Form’.

There’s 3 parts to setting up a web opt in 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!”

In stage 2 we can customize the web form properties, such as the name of the form (this is not seen by anyone except you) and which page on your website your new subscriber will be sent to you after they opt in. This is called the ‘thank you’ page.

If you are setting up a one-time offer (which we will discuss in the next section of this book) then you’ll want to select ‘Custom Page’ and enter the url of your one-time offer page.

Stage 3 is where you are given the code you need to enter onto your squeeze page so that your form will appear and function correctly. In Aweber you are given the choice of either using a short Javascript snippet, or the longer HTML code.

I highly recommend that you use the HTML code for two reasons:

1. You can easily modify the form on your site (if needed)
2. If a web browser has Javascript disabled, they won’t see the opt in form!

Follow-Up Messages

After someone opts in to your squeeze page, we want them to receive email messages, such as an email with the download link for their free report. You’ll also want to set up a series of follow-up email messages that can deliver great content and offers to your subscribers on autopilot (this will be discussed in detail in a later section of the book).

To set up the follow up email messages, go to the ‘Messages’ tab, select ‘Follow Up’ and then ‘New HTML Message’.

Your first follow up message will be the one where you give them the link to the free gift. You may also want to briefly introduce yourself and how you will help your subscriber.

Don’t be afraid to give them a link to a paid offer that will help them solve their problem.

Tip: Make sure that the subject line of this message is obvious, e.g. “Your free gift’. This first email is an important one. If they don’t bother to open it, then they will be less likely to open any of your other emails.

Testing

Before sending any traffic to your website, always make sure you test that the opt-in form is working correctly on your squeeze page. You can do this by logging in yourself.

At the same time, check to see that you’re successfully being redirected to the one-time offer. Also check that the first follow up message arrives in your inbox and that the download link works correctly.

Congratulations! You’ve just successfully set up your squeeze page!

In the next section, we’ll talk about how you can set up a one-time offer.