Hey guys. I am a fanatic for testing my opt-ins and tweaking my LPs, to an unhealthy degree perhaps:) however I Ihave found that my opt ins increase substantially when I don’t ask for a first name, in other words just the email address. I surmise that people don’t like giving out there first names, perhaps its too personal in this medium, however they will give out their emails. A strange one, to be sure but I have split tested this and its true, opt-ins increase. My list is about 50k at the minute so I plan to soley use LPs with only mail opt-ins for the next few weeks and graph my rates against what I would normally expect to see. I will keep you posted if anyone is curious
Less fields generally increase completion rates, sometimes oddly as an email is certainly more direct than a name, but also easier to avoid (and a name + an email may come off as more than just a name). Of course opt-ins aren’t the only thing to consider; quality of your list means a lot so the question I’d ask you is how removing fields or optimizing to drive #s impacts the #s down the road (opens, clicks, sales, etc).
Hi Ted, thats an excellent question and one I am researching at the moment, will marginally less commitment by a prospect lead to reduced sales. From my very initial observations there seems to be no related decline in sales. Now, there may be other variables involved, as I say I have a large list but I treat them very well, infrequent mailings, no ad swaps, no rubbish, low cost quality offerings that work only etc so it may be a combination of things. Its too early to tell but I plan to observe this over the next six weeks and report with a set of quantified results
As Ted said, the less fields a user has to fill out the more likely they are to complete a form and email addresses aren’t as personal now, maybe because the majority of people have more than one email address.