Using an Opt-In Form When You Give Anything for Free

If you give something away for free on your website like coupons, whitepapers, case studies, a PDF, anything downloadable or printable, you should get something for it shouldn't you? How about an email address and permission to email to it?

We've seen successful companies include opt-in forms on a page where visitors have to go before they get to the "free schwag" page. A good example is this WorkZ page above. Before a visitor is taken to the page where they can get free forms for their business, WorkZ asks for their email address and permission.

You'll want to try to get them to double-opt in if you can.  How can you do this?

1. Offer them benefits of what you'll be sending them.
2. Tell them how often you'll be emailing them, set their expectations up front.
3. Deliver on your promise.

You can use the VR Opt-in form for free in your VR Account, or use one of your own. Either way it's a great way to build your email list.

More ideas are greatly appreciated!

Comments

[Al Iverson]

This is good stuff. The only thing I might highlight differently or more strongly is the double opt-in component. Not legally required, of course, but having managed a ton of address signup forms, for hundreds of clients giving away free things, I found out the hard way that if you don't force it to double opt-in, you're going to end up with lots of junk addresses and deliverability nightmares when mailing those lists. Been there, done that.

To me, this seems like one of those areas (freebie giveaways) were DOI really should be a functional requirement 100% of time.