A conversion rate is a vital metric for marketers because it helps guide them determine which of their marketing efforts work and which need to be modified or simply abandoned.
When determining a good conversion rate for an opt-in landing page, there is no set number to give marketers.
A conversion rate depends heavily on the overall traffic of a brand’s website and can even depend on the form of opt-in that the marketing team implements. They can come in many varieties, including:
- Landing pages
- Exit intent pop-ups
- Call-to-action offers in blogs and on social media
- Email opt-ins
What is an opt-in landing page?
An opt-in landing page is a designated page on a website that begins the sales funnel. In most cases, these pages don’t require an actual purchase. Instead, it’s a way to generate a new lead for the marketing team to add to their email list for further nurturing.
A great example of this is the opt-in landing page for popular real estate listing company Trulia. On their landing page, they simply ask for “an address” to start the estimation process.
Source: Trulia
After the user enters their address, another prompt comes up that will ask for further information that can be used to add to the brand’s prospect list.
Source: Trulia
Remember, these opt-in landing pages only help guide the consumer to information that they want, not to push a sale down their throat.
The whole point of an opt-in is to gain the consumer’s permission to collect their information and send them content that they’ll want to receive.
By law, permission is required to send an email campaign, which makes opt-in pages vital.
How to measure an opt-in conversion rate
An opt-in conversion rate is determined by the number of conversions made divided by the total number of people who visited the opt-in page during a predetermined period of time.
As mentioned earlier, there is no set ideal opt-in conversion rate. What marketers should monitor is the trend in conversion rates over time.
Imagine a marketing team launches an opt-in landing page and allows it to run over a period of 3 months. They may have had 100 visitors to the page, with a total of 15 individuals who actually entered their information. The team would take the 15 and divide by 100, giving them a 15% conversion rate.
That’s not terrible for a brand-new landing page. Now imagine that, over the next 3 months, they have an additional 250 people visit the page and 20 opt-ins. This would give them an 8% conversion rate.
Clearly, this shows a declining pattern, meaning the marketing team needs to revamp their method.
Remember, just because you may have seen more visitors to the landing page, doesn’t mean that you are guaranteed to see a higher conversion rate.
Source: MOZ
While we were able to calculate these numbers by hand, a larger website may need a little extra help. There are a variety of analytic tools out there that help marketing teams monitor numbers such as page visits and conversion rates.
Do opt-ins really matter?
Yes, opt-ins matter for a variety of reasons. The most important reason is that it shows marketing teams what is working and what isn’t, in terms of their marketing campaigns and overall conversions.
Source: PPC Hero
The example above makes it quite clear that the signup form being used isn’t generating much of a conversion from the initial landing page to the final customer signup.
With 420 people visiting the landing page and only 8 opting in to the offer, that gives this brand a 2% conversion rate.
The tricky part about calculating a conversion rate is factoring in the right data. A website’s total conversion rate overall could be higher than a single landing page and a single offer. So make sure to define your conversion goal ahead of time.
What now?
Once you’ve discovered what works for your website landing pages, you’ll want to take the information you’ve received from those opt-ins and start focusing in on your email campaigns.
There are several different campaigns that a marketing team can send out to subscribers:
- Welcome email campaign
- The re-engagement email campaign
- Promotional email campaign
- Seasonal email campaign
Be sure to check out our suggestions for email campaigns to help you reach your customers now.