13 Questions to Ask to Improve Your Newsletter Sign-Up Page

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This story was adapted from a webinar with Dan Oshinsky of Inbox Collective; Justine Jordan, head of strategy and community at Beefree; and Mike Nelson, co-founder of Really Good Emails. Missed the webinar but want to get even more tips about landing pages? You can watch the replay of the webinar here — it’s free to watch.

Your newsletter landing page is one of the most important tools you have. It’s the front door to your newsletter — it’s the page where you can explain why your newsletter is worth making time for. It’s the thing that takes that casual reader and turns them into a subscriber. And it’s a resource you’ll use over and over again. You’ll probably include a link to it in the header of your site, promote it on social media, and mention the page every time you appear on a podcast and encourage listeners to sign up for your newsletter.

But merely having a landing page isn’t enough. If you haven’t optimized the page, you may find that readers make it to the page but never actually sign up for your newsletter. You’re missing out on list growth — simply because your page lacks a few key elements.

So here are 13 questions you can ask to improve your newsletter landing page. Ask these, and I bet you’ll find at least two or three things you can do to convert more readers into newsletter subscribers.

1.) Have you clearly explained the value of the newsletter and who it’s for?

A really good landing page starts with three basic elements:

1. It tells readers what they’ll get and when they’ll get it — Does this newsletter come out every day? Every week? Every month? And is there a time of day when I can expect it? Answer those questions so you can help readers build the habit of looking for your newsletter on specific days or times.
2. Make it clear who this newsletter is for. — No newsletter is truly for everyone. Have a specific reader in mind and make sure you spell that out on the landing page. When your ideal reader clicks through to this page, they should be thinking, “It seems like this newsletter was created just for me!”
3. Tell readers why it’s going to be valuable for them. — Will this newsletter make them smarter? Save them time? Make them money? Get them a great deal? Help them be the first to know about news in their community? There are a lot of potential jobs to be done for a newsletter, and you should let your readers know what your emails will do for them.

Take a look at your landing page. Are all three of these clearly laid out? If not, you may need to make a few changes to make sure readers know the who, what, when, and why of your newsletter.

2.) Have you shown proof that others find this newsletter valuable?

One of the most common reasons why people don’t sign up for newsletters is because they believe it won’t be worth their time or match their expectations.

I get that — I’ve excitedly signed up for plenty of newsletters only to get a few editions and go, “Is this really it?”

Here’s how you can overcome that obstacle: By offering social proof that other readers love your newsletter, too.

You can do that a few ways:

• You can include testimonials from readers or influencers about the newsletter. (You can collect these via a survey or use a tool like Senja to collect and display them.)
• You can mention the size of your list as proof that lots of other people like it.
• You can showcase other feedback, like the number of readers in your most recent survey who gave the newsletter a five-star rating.
• You can highlight the media properties — like magazines or podcasts — that have endorsed or mentioned your newsletter.
• If you’re a B2B or industry product, you can mention the places where your readers work. (Knowing that someone at a rival company reads your newsletter might convince a new reader to subscribe.)

You don’t have to try all of these tactics, but utilizing one or two pieces of social proof might be enough to convince a reader that your newsletter is actually worth signing up for.

3.) Can readers see a sample of the newsletter before they sign up?

With this, the goal is to show, not tell, a reader that your newsletter is unusually valuable. You can do this one of two ways: You can show a screenshot of a sample email on the landing page, or you can link out to a recent example (or examples) of your newsletter.

If you do the latter, make sure there’s a way to sign up on that sample newsletter. If a reader hits a dead end — they read the sample but don’t see a sign-up box — they may close the tab and not complete the sign-up process.

4.) Have you told them more about the team behind this newsletter?

It’s great to tell readers about the product and show that other readers like the newsletter, but what about the writer or team behind the newsletter? Why should a reader want to listen to them?

The inbox is like a digital living room, and if you’re asking readers to let you into that space, you’ve got to give them a bit more than a one-sentence bio. Make the case for why you have the experience, knowledge, or resources to serve them, and make sure you’re writing that “About Us” section in the same tone as your newsletter. Done right, you’re giving them a sneak peek at the voice they’ll be hearing from once they sign up.

5.) Have you optimized the page for mobile?

So many sign-up pages look great on a laptop or desktop, but when you view them on a phone, things look a little off.

On mobile, the secret is making sure you’ve got the two most important elements — 1.) The call to action to sign up, and 2.) The actual box to enter an email address — on the screen as soon as they load the page. If they have to scroll to find them, it may lower your page’s conversion rate. (I’ll talk more about conversion rate in just a moment.)

Not everyone’s an experienced web designer, and that’s where no-code builders like Beefree can come in handy. When you’re building in Beefree, you can start with one of their free landing page templates or build something using their drag-and-drop builder. As you build your page, you’ll be able to see a preview of both the desktop and mobile view, so you’ll have confidence that your page will look great no matter what device a reader is using.

6.) Are you asking for only the most important information at the point of sign-up?

For many newsletters, the only piece of information you need to ask for on this page is an email address.

Can you ask for more on the page? Absolutely — asking for a first name or last name, for instance, can help with later personalization efforts, and an ecommerce site might ask for key details, like birthday or location, to make it easier to segment readers later on.

But you can also ask for this information after a reader signs up. For instance, think about the sign-up page as the first of several pages in a sign-up flow. A reader can first enter their email address, and after you’ve gotten that, you can ask them for additional information. Do they want to sign up for more newsletters? Do you want to ask them about their interests or job? Instead of trying to cram everything onto one page, you can ask these additional questions after you’ve gotten the most important piece of information: their email address.

7.) Have you figured out your opt-in strategy?

Once a reader enters their email address, do you want to do anything to confirm that the reader actually wants your newsletter?

Some newsletters opt for a single opt-in approach — a reader enters an email address and is added to your list right away. Others go with a double opt-in process that requires them to confirm, via email, that they want to be added to your list. Either option is OK — and if you’re not sure which makes sense for you, I’ve detailed the pros and cons of the two approaches in this article.

If you go with double opt-in, consider implementing deep links that filter directly to the inbox. Show these links on the confirmation page after a reader signs up so that a reader can click and be taken to their inbox to click “confirm” on the email you’ve just sent them.

In Gmail, the URL for a deep link will look like this:

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#search/from%3A(your%40newsletter.com)+in%3Aanywhere+newer_than%3A1h

Make sure to replace the email address for your newsletter in that query — (your%40newsletter.com) is the part to update — and a reader who clicks on that link will open Gmail and automatically see the welcome email you’ve just sent them.

8.) Are you protecting this page from bots?

Bots can find your landing page and enter thousands of fake email addresses into your sign-up form. When that happens, it can cause all sorts of deliverability problems.

So whether you’re using single or double opt-in, you want to have additional protection on the form to make sure bots don’t get through. There are three common ways newsletters protect these forms:

1. You can install a CAPTCHA on your form. — CAPTCHA can identify non-human behavior and block it on your site. A bonus: For most newsletters, using CAPTCHA is absolutely free.
2. You can use a third-party verification tool to spot fake emails. — Tools like Kickbox or ZeroBounce will check an email address against a list of verified emails, and if it spots something suspicious, it won’t let that email address onto your list. (You do have to pay for every email address that runs through one of these tools.)
3. You can add a honeypot to your form. — This is a more advanced tactic where you add a hidden field to the form that only a bot can see. If someone signs up and fills out the hidden field, you’ll know it’s a bot, and you can remove those email addresses from your list.

Any of these tactics can keep your list secure and prevent deliverability problems before they start.

9.) Have you published the page at an easy-to-remember URL?

Don’t place your landing page on a complicated URL. You’re going to speak at a conference or appear on a podcast, and do you really want to tell that audience that your sign-up page is hosted at yoursite.com/newsletter-sign-up-page?

Of course not — they’ll never remember all those words and hyphens! Make sure you put your landing page at a URL anyone can remember. Yoursite.com/newsletter or yoursite.com/subscribe are two great options.

10.) Have you optimized the page for search or social sharing?

Try this: Copy the URL for your newsletter, go to Facebook’s Sharing Debugger tool, and click “Debug.” What do you see?

What you’ll probably find is that if you share your landing page on social media, the preview that appears in someone’s feed isn’t very attractive.

But this is something that’s easy to improve. Make sure your page includes:

• A headline with a call to action to subscribe.
• A subheadline that includes more detail about why the newsletter is valuable.
• An image that showcases the product or provides social proof that the newsletter is worth signing up for.

You can do the same to optimize the page for search. Let’s say you publish a weekly newsletter about how to make ice cream at home. The search-friendly version of the landing page should have a headline that appeals to readers searching for a newsletter like yours: “Looking for tips to make ice cream at home? Sign up for our weekly newsletter.”

11.) Is there a thank you page after a reader signs up?

If the only thing that appears after a reader is a confirmation message — “Thanks! You’re on the list!” — you might be missing out on a big opportunity.

The moment after a reader signs up, you have their attention. What do you want to ask them to do next?

Maybe you want to ask them to share a bit more information about themself.

Maybe you want to share a few top-performing pieces of content from your site so they can keep reading.

Maybe you want to offer them a coupon code to buy something from your store.

Maybe you want to encourage them to follow you on social media or subscribe to your podcast.

But don’t let the thank you be the end of the sign-up process. When you have their full attention, give them a next step to take.

12.) Is the page connected to the rest of the subscriber’s journey?

Here’s a common landing page mistake: an org might be running dozens of different ads to drive readers to sign up for their newsletter, and each ad has a unique message, but all of the ads link back to the same, generic landing page.

You may need to build different versions of the page for those specific audiences. For instance, when I speak at conferences, I often promise attendees a special worksheet if they sign up for my newsletter. To do that, I’ll set up a unique version of my landing page just for that audience, and then write a welcome email thanking them for attending the talk and including the resource I’d promised them.

There should be a clear link between all the pieces of your onboarding strategy:

• The source that drives people to the landing page.
• The landing page itself.
• And the welcome series you send afterwards.

The more connected those pieces are, the better the experience will be for that reader — and, I’ve found, the more likely they are to engage with your newsletter in the long run.

13.) Are you tracking conversion rates on these pages?

Conversion rate measures the number of readers who sign up for the newsletter divided by the number of readers who visit the landing page. The higher the conversion rate, the more effective that page is at turning readers into newsletter subscribers.

What does an average rate look like? It really depends on who you ask:

• Kit says the industry average is about 2%.
• Unbounce says the average is 4.3%.
• Mailchimp says the average is 9.7%.

Those numbers are low — but that doesn’t mean you should be satisfied if your newsletter gets to a 10% conversion rate. My landing page has a 49.8% conversion rate, but that tells me that I’ve still got room for improvement. I’m never going to get to a 100% conversion rate, but I think I can get more than one out of every two readers to sign up for my newsletter.

But the most important thing, I think, is to make sure you’re at least tracking conversion rate. Once you know where you’re starting from, then you can start to make improvements and track how those changes help you convert more readers to subscribers.

Looking for even more tips about landing pages? I co-hosted a webinar all about landing page best practices with Justine Jordan, head of strategy and community at Beefree, and Mike Nelson, co-founder of Really Good Emails. You can watch the replay here:

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