The “in page” opt-in trick

Quickie overview…

This technique allows you to capture leads, follow-up prospects and interested visitors without the need for a pop-up box, and without distracting your prospect from your main sales message.

How it works…

Lets say you have a long sales letter. Your aim here is to try and incorporate an opt-in capture mechanism without pushing your visitor’s interest away from your sales letter.

I conducted a study of 50 marketing sites, and almost 95% of them used pop-up boxes or on-site capture forms. Pop-up boxes are fine, but they’re highly undesired (and therefore blocked) by a lot of your prospects, and the software that’s already installed on their computers or by their ISPs.

On-site capture forms are good too — but the problem is, they’re segmented from the rest of your sales pitch. In other words, a site that uses a “subscribe here” box of some kind, undoubtedly sends more than one message at once - which defies the rule of DIRECT (i.e. focused) marketing!

So, what’s the solution?

Make your opt-in capture apart of your sales process, with this neat little Quickie!

Here’s how it works…

1. Look at your existing sales letter, and seek an opportunity to incorporate a short blurb that in some way aids your sales process. For example… if you sell weight loss information, you might consider implementing a page that contains “before and after” shots, or something along those lines.

The trick here is to find something that relates to your sales message. A good idea is to find something that proves what you’re saying in your main message, like perhaps your financial statements if you offer people a chance to make more money, or an interior photo portfolio of a home if you’re selling real estate, etc. Something that solidifies the sales message that led to it.

2. Write a small paragraph that leads to a simple capture form, saying something like…

“Want proof? Obviously, I don’t want my half-naked pictures plastered all around the Internet, so if you tell me who you are - I’ll show you who I am… Just tap your name and email address below, and I’ll show you what happened when I lost 80lbs….”

It should be a “bridge” paragraph, between your sales letter, and your capture form.

Place the form inside your sales letter, and don’t make it stand out too much. It should be an integral part of your sales process, and avoid looking like a separate opt-in box. This avoids the “stigma” of having an opt-in box, and instead, becomes what I call an “optional necessity” in your sales process.

4. Hook up the form to your follow-up/email management system in the same way that you normally would (usually by changing the <form action=”"> attribute to point to the script that takes in your prospect’s information.) In addition, add the following line of code of Javascript to the top of your web page… (inside the <script> tag)…

function openSubscribeWin(object,theURL) {
window.open(theURL,’subpopup‘,’scrollbars=yes,
width=600,height=300‘);

return false;
}

(Note: The window.open line needs to be all on one line)

This creates a Javascript function that, when called, will open up a separate window for your subscribe results. Rather than showing results in the same window (and interfere with your sales letter), you want to show results outside of the screen - in a new window.

Then, add the following to your <form> tag to your opt-in capture area…

<form onSubmit=”return openSubscribeWin(this,URL);”>

And finally, where it says “URL” in red above, enter the following…

’script.php?email=
‘+this.email.value+’&fn=’this.fn.value

(Note: The above line needs to be all on one line)

The “script.php” part would be changed to whatever URL/file you wanted to send the data to. The “this.email.value” and “this.fn.value” parts correspond to the form data you submitted - it assumes that your email box is named “email” and your first name box is named “fn”. Change as necessary.

Also, you’ll notice that the information entered into the form is being sent as “email” and “fn” to the script. More than likely, your mailing list manager would need to accept incoming variables in a different format - perhaps, “email_address” and “first_name”. You’ll need to change those parts above to reflect that.

So, for example, if you have a form in your sales letter with two text fields - one called “email” and one called “first_name”, and the URL you need to send data to is at “http://site.com/list.php” - and the script is looking for an incoming “fname” for the user’s first name, “emailadd” for their email address and a third field, “thanks”, which contains the URL to show as a thank you page, you’d write….

<form onSubmit=”return openSubscribeWin(
‘http://site.com/list.php?emailadd=’
+this.email.value+’&fname=’+this.first_name.value+
‘&thanks=http://mysite.com/thankyou.html’);”>

Which, of course, would all be on one line…

This would instruct the browser to open a pop-up window, send the email and first_name data over to the script, and when the script returns a result, would show it in the same pop-up window page.

The only thing you might have to change, is the “width” and “height” attributes in your Javascript code featured above as the first portion of code, to match those of the pop-up page, to make sure it’s the right size to fit on the screen (You could just use the target=”_blank” tag on your form to open a new window, and avoid the Javascript altogether - but, this method allows you to create a precisely dimensioned window for your “thank you” page, and is a simple enough way of doing it).

For a beginner, this may sound complex. What we’ve just worked with there is basic Javascript, form processing, and sending data to a specific URL - which are all necessary elements of basic website creation, if you want to do perform neat little tricks like this, that you won’t find elsewhere.

With a little bit of HTML and Javascript knowledge (which you can obtain free, anywhere on the web, or by picking up a couple of good guides from Amazon or your local bookstore), you’ll see just how easy it is… and just how many different models you can come up with.

The results…

I’ve used this technique on several different websites, and so far, it hasn’t failed me. Used on one site last year, I was able to build a mailing list of over 30,000 individual opt-in prospects without spending a penny, by incorporating it directly into the sales letter.

Not only was the list building complete automatic - but, it pre-qualified my list too, because the capture form was placed approximately half way down my sales letter - meaning, that 95% of my prospects had already read the first half of what I was offering them. They were “pre-qualified”.

This is a benefit you simply don’t get from “in your face” opt-in boxes hosted on pop-up pages, or anywhere else on your site. And of course, if they’re pre-qualified, they’re already more interested to buy from you. It’s quick to implement, and this Quickie alone could pay for the cost of your entire investment in this package in just a few short weeks. Watch the video included for further info.