How to Build an Opt-In Page That Converts Without Spamming or Manipulating Anyone

0:00Jim Edwards:You're going to pay with some brain sweat now thinking about the right stuff, or you're going to pay with years of struggle and screwing around. That's going to leave you poor and dumb. Yeah. And so if I had to just, if I had to sum the whole thing up, that's it.

0:32And we're on our fourth episode, the final chapter. Yes, Jim, so happy again to have you here. Today is all about opt-ins, which I would actually think is probably one of the more important ones of all, because there's no point in having a sales letter or email sequences if you can't even get people to opt in.

0:53Jim Edwards:Well, you know, that is handy, especially if you want to sell stuff or develop lists that can turn into customer lists or communicate with people or get people to pay attention to what you're doing without having to run an ad every single time you want somebody to click. So, yes, it's quite important. So when it comes to opt-ins, and I know you've been, again, you've been in this industry for many, many years, and you've seen the version of opt-ins before there were digital opt-ins, right? I'm sure there was something that was before that. Actually, let's talk about that because I don't have that experience.

1:31I want to know, what was it before we had opt-ins? What did people do?

1:35Jim Edwards:People subscribed to a physical mailing list. I worked in a mail house in Newport News, Virginia, where we bought lists of people or we helped people buy lists. And you had list brokers, and that was this giant business. List brokers, people that had lists of people that were buyers or had expressed interest in something. And then you literally had to send them physical mail. And so one of the things that people would do would be to advertise in magazines, newspapers. That was pretty much the main way. Magazines, newspapers, and then direct mail to get people to spill out a card and send to request more information.

2:24Jim Edwards:That's how you ended up on a mailing list. And, you know, you laugh, but there were people making millions of dollars doing that when a million dollars was a million bucks. I mean, a million dollars seems like a lot now, but a million dollars 35 years ago was a crap ton of money. Yeah. Yeah. I would say I mean, I'm not an economic economics professor, but like in what I know and even in my life, a million dollars today back then would be equivalent to probably three million. if not even more just a way of lifestyle if you talk about inflation lifestyle i mean it's totally different lifestyle right so um i was laughing you're why i was laughing only because i'm thinking about all the variables that you can't control in that old method like in terms of you got to send them a letter that letter has to hit their mailbox they got to walk out to that mailbox they got to open that mailbox they take all the mail within that mailbox they come back in their house they You got to sort through all that mail.

3:24Hopefully, hopefully they sort through yours. Then you got to get them to actually open it up, take the letter out, read the letter, be convinced enough that it's important enough to fill out the card or call in. I mean, I can I can play the situation out in my head. That's how I think about sales, all those steps. Right. That's how I think about funnels. And that's why I was laughing all to just get them to say, yes, I would like more information. And we're out here in the world of luxury. I'm going to call it. It's a simple click of a button. Autumn email. Even you don't have to type your email anymore because if your email has like his auto, you know, input.

4:03Right. It just two clicks. You're in. You're subscribed. But you become a lot easier.

4:08Jim Edwards:Yes. And the principles that worked when you had all of these physical things that went along with it are even more important than they were then. And I'll tell you why, because there was a barrier to entry back in the day. You had to be able to find a name, be able to afford to print the piece, put the stamp on it and send it out. The minimum quantity was always at least$1 ,000 unless you were doing lumpy mail and then it could be one. But if you were doing mass mail type stuff, just to get in the game, you were going to spend$2 ,000,$3 ,000,$4 ,000 just to do a test. and now any chucklehead for$20 can start running ads on Facebook to have ads show up in front of people and send them to a funnel, which I think it's hilarious because I don't know if you're even old enough to remember, but the thing that everybody was requesting for the more information was a free report.

5:19Jim Edwards:Do you know what a free report was? It was a freaking 10-page, 12-page sales letter printed front and back disguised as something you wanted to read. So now, because any chucklehead can do this, all the chuckleheads do it. So that's why your feed, your Facebook feed and any other feed is filled with ads because every chucklehead has 20 bucks a day to run ads because they heard they could make huge money with little ads, big profits. And so you have to be better than the chuckleheads. And being better means you have to know the target audience. You have to really know psychologically what's going to make them react.

6:07Jim Edwards:And you need to be able to get them to take the action you want them to take before they can have the bright, shiny object squirrel moment in the next eight seconds. And so it's different, but it's the same and actually more intense now. Well, I was going to say it's inundated with the market. So I think it's so important what you said there because this is why I had you on, right? Is this right here? Is there's a mass, like there's so many more people doing this. Anybody can do it. I love you said chucklehead. So going back and understanding the true fundamentals and understanding things like copyright, which we talked about already, and understanding Avatar, ICP, and understanding all those things that we've had to call about is so important.

6:54So you know exactly what to say, how to say it in their head. So they're even willing to pop up because they get inundated every single day. So opt-ins, I'm pumped. Let's get into it. I mean, here we are. I can see it on the screen. I can't wait to see what this comes up to be.

7:13Jim Edwards:So basically, when you think about an opt-in, at its most basic form, an opt-in is asking somebody to give you their email. At the most basic form, I'm asking somebody to give me their email address in exchange for something. Now, an opt-in is an exchange of I get your info and you get something back. So it can be an email. It could be name and email. I pretty much don't do anything without getting name and email. There are a lot of people, you know, you will get fewer responses without the name, but I like getting the name so that I can actually address the communication. and this also, I don't know, kind of cuts down on getting just their porn email, you know, the one they use for, for the stuff they have no intention of paying any attention to.

8:12Yeah.

8:13Jim Edwards:So, but you can also get phone. Yeah. I was going to say, why not get the phone or at least have the option for phone. You can get their physical address. Okay. Now what's the difference between just getting an email versus getting name, email, phone, and address and freaking blood type for just for anything. And that comes down to a connection of, and I want to make sure I'm not, that you can see this with the way the screen is and stuff, but it's a difference between risk and perceived value. so right now in their mind they're thinking themselves oh shit they're gonna spam me all right so you're gonna spam me their their risk of being spammed versus the amount of value that you're offering in exchange for the opt-in and so what you got to do is reduce the risk and raise the value so that they're like, okay, yeah, you can have my email.

9:26All right.

9:27Jim Edwards:You can have my information. I mean, that's it at the most basic thing. That's all you're doing is overcoming all the negatives that they're thinking could happen if they opt in with the promise of the value that's on the other side of them filling out a form and whacking the button, whether it's as simple as offering a lead magnet, a report, a checklist, an assessment, something like that, all the way up to filling out a detailed form that would be in an application funnel, which an application funnel is still just an opt-in. So when you think about this, it actually simplifies it a lot because when you're coming up with your offer page for the opt-in, you just got to make sure that what you're offering is more valuable than the risk that someone might be thinking.

10:21Jim Edwards:So how do we do that? Well, there are about three things that you can control that are going to do that. The first thing is the hook or the headline package. And headline package, which I think we've talked about before, is basically the prehead, the headline, and the sub headline. And the pre headline typically calls out to the audience, you know, attention, frustrated homeowners, or it calls out to a situation or a problem. Attention, anyone suffering from erectile dysfunction. So then you said, yeah, awful quick there, man. No, I'm just playing. The next thing is the headline, which contains a big payoff.

11:19Jim Edwards:Typically, it's some sort of payoff of a result or resolution of a problem. How to write and publish your own outrageously profitable e-book in as little as seven days, even if you can't write, can't type, and failed high school English class. You know, some sort of a headline that, again, just to reinforce, it's a result, resolution of a problem. And then the sub-headline typically ties whatever it is you're trying to get them to opt in for to the benefit, or to the main headline, the result, payoff of the headline. So new report reveals how to overcome erectile dysfunction without pills, strange massage, or large quantities of money.

12:10Jim Edwards:So what are we doing here? We're grabbing their attention.

12:17Jim Edwards:We're hitting them with a benefit or resolution, promise of a benefit or resolution of a problem, and then we're tying the thing that we're offering to that with the subheadline. So pretty much this does, especially if it's a free opt-in, okay? We're typically talking about a free opt-in. The best opt-in is when someone buys something. That's why we talk about the difference between a lead magnet and a tripwire. A lead magnet is typically something that's free. A tripwire is something that they pay a little bit of money for, okay? So I'm assuming right now when we're talking about all this that we're talking about something that's free.

12:58Jim Edwards:We're making some sort of a free offer here. So when we do that,

13:06Jim Edwards:now, this does the majority of the work. Are there other things, if we're thinking about our opt-in page, I have seen where a basic opt-in page, you got your pre-head, you got your headline, You got your subhead and then a button for them to hit. And this is more of a mechanical thing. So, you know, send my report. Let's say we'll just pretend like this is a report for right now. So what's not on this page is a form. because as soon as somebody sees your page and they see a form, they immediately go, shit, they want me to opt in. They're going to spam me. Oh my God, I'm going to end up on porno lists and all this other stuff.

14:01Jim Edwards:And I'm just going, I just don't have time for that. Okay. They see the form and they're like, the hell with it. They don't see your cool prehead, your headline and your sub headline. They're gone. So that's why you have a button that says, you know, send my report or download your report or something like that. They click it. And then that pops the little window that says, Hey, where can we send your report? You know, give us your best email. We promise not to spam you, abuse you or otherwise, you know, whatever. And what this does is they've, when they click this, they've made the decision that they want it, whatever it is.

14:40Jim Edwards:And so that's why you use this in conjunction with the little box. That's why you get so much higher rates of opt-in because they've in their mind that, yeah, screw it. I'll take it. And then they're like, ah, I just got to do it. That's, I want to make sure for those that are listening and can't see this, cause this is actually very interesting. Cause like I, I've been in this space for a while myself and talking about split testing and you just gave, you just basically said you split tested and you've seen this actually be way more effective. So typical, right? Opt-in page is everything you said.

15:16You got your pre-headlines, you had your header, sub-headline, and then usually it's right there. It says email, you know, name, email, phone, and then press submit. You're saying take that out, only have the headline stack, then a button that says download or whatever the call to action is, when they hit that, then a pop-up happens for them to put their email in because you've already made the commitment. They've already made the commitment. And what I love what you said is when they first land on that page, they don't just bounce right off going, oh, they just want my email. They actually sit long enough to read the headline.

15:51This is Matt, that little nuance. I would love to split test that immediately with

15:58Jim Edwards:It's huge. So then the next thing when you're talking about the page is some people, they're just like, okay, it looks legit. So I mean, you got to have a page that looks like it's part of a legitimate website. Maybe you have a logo up here and some other stuff, but don't have a bunch of other crap. I mean, the only thing that you want is for them to be able to hit the thing. Now, for some people, they're going to be like, okay, well, let me see what this is. You know, they're like the stray dog that's like, you know, what's going on? Is this going to chop my head off? So then what you want to have down below that, you can have, there are other elements that you can put onto the page.

16:39Jim Edwards:So one thing that's cool that you can do down here is it's all about credibility and trust and this sounds good. So this is where you'll see stuff like, you know, as seen on, you know, and you'll NBC or... This is a little fold at this point. It pretty, yes, pretty much it's, or it's just going to be slightly visible or what have you, okay? But you got credibility stuff and then you have... Again, depending on what it is, if it's a report, a checklist, or whatever, then you're going to have something like about who are we or something like that. And then you're going to have a picture and a couple of bullets about you or about the company.

17:41Jim Edwards:um this is also where you can have testimony you know a couple testimonials um with actual pictures and stuff just just anything you have that increases credibility that this isn't chinese freaking hackers that are taking your stuff and you're gonna end up in a work camp or something i mean it's just this this is where it's all just this is real This is credible. You also want to make sure that you have all your disclaimers and all that other stuff at the bottom, contact information, all that other stuff, which is important for, I mean, unless Facebook has changed their rules again. I mean, this is the kind of stuff that they want to see at the bottom of any page.

18:27Jim Edwards:Plus, you want to have your disclaimers, disclosures, links, all that stuff. but that's how we kind of transform this from just some offer thing from 1996 into something that looks like a legit page but it's just here's the thing so that's at its most basic how your opt-in page is going to be structured effectively because what this other stuff does is remember the whole purpose here, decrease risk, increase perceived gain. And so all of this other stuff is decreasing the perception of risk. You're not just putting your email into some blind webpage. This has got the thing. They got a report. They got all that stuff.

19:15Jim Edwards:Okay. It looks like they've been on here. All right. Looks like a legit dude. Got some testimonials. This report was, This free report was worth more than stuff that I've done that I paid$2 ,000 from, says Sally from Dubuque. And at its most basic, that's your starting point. Okay, that's where we start from. Now, what are some other things that you could do to this to make it more effective, to make it so that maybe it converts a little bit better? You asked about split testing stuff. what are some things that you could split test? Well, as you're going through that, let me ask you a question here, because we've done a lot of split testing on our end, and it was interesting to see that you're putting stuff below the fold, because with our split test, we've seen the most minimum actually be, like if the headline copy is done properly, all the stuff below the fold ends up actually being more of a distraction.

20:15Jim Edwards:So that's why I'm not telling you to put a shitload of stuff on there. okay this is that it's most basic that's a real basic page okay so other stuff that you can do depending on the audience now you're selling a bunch of wantapreneurs high on hopium that are up at two o 'clock in the morning eating cheetos and drinking jolt cola is very different than going after engineers or if you're familiar with the disc scale going after the high d's versus the high C's. So again, knowing your audience, but some things that you can do that I have seen make a difference is having like a bulleted list of three payoffs of whatever it is, the thing that you are trying to get them to opt in for.

21:05Jim Edwards:And then having that either before or after the download my report or access my whatever that that can have a real impact, especially if you have an audience that, you know, we try and focus on the one big result. But I can remember a specific case where we had a thing that we were doing that, you know, I told people had, you know, how to get a positively unfair advantage in business and in life. And that represented different stuff to different people. So I had a bullet list that said, you know, whatever that means to you, a fat bank account, a new house, a better relationship, a better career, whatever it is, this will help you do it.

21:54Jim Edwards:And so, and that really helped with conversion because it, I mean, some people I'm sure in their minds, yeah, we'll take all of that. So, so that is the one thing that is definitely, and definitely would be above the fold that you, you want to test. And then the stuff down here with the who you are and what you got,

22:19Jim Edwards:that, try it with it, try it without it. I've had one of my most successful opt-in pages was literally had a cartoon character of me right here. And all it said next to it was the copywriting guy. No author of this, 30 years of doing that. It was just the copywriting guy.

22:50Jim Edwards:So yes, some of this stuff can be a distraction, and that's why you got to test. It's going to depend on your audience. It's going to depend on what you're doing. Now, you can also build some of this stuff into up here. So if I wanted to say something like, attention, entrepreneurial authors, how to turn your book into a lead machine without giving away a single copy. Bestselling author Jim Edwards reveals secrets of turning your book into a lead machine learned over the last 30 years, you know, download your report. So I've built a bunch of stuff in there and I'm spitballing that. I mean, obviously I would spend at least a half a cup of coffee on thinking that through, but that you can kind of fold that stuff into it.

23:51Jim Edwards:So that's, again, that's your basic opt-in page when that's available. Like that's kind of like your, your 24 seven vending machine on the internet available for anybody to opt in anytime. And what you're hoping for is that the urgency of their problem gets them to sign up now instead of waiting.

24:20Jim Edwards:So I don't know if you have any questions before I move on because they're going to kind of go on to the next. Yeah, no, I think it's, I think the key here, I'm going to say this, even though you're the expert, I think with the opt in the whole philosophy of kiss now has to be very important how you use that philosophy. But less is more with opt ins. And it's more about how you write that copy and knowing your audience. You do that right. Everything else becomes easy. Right. 100 percent. I mean, this that's why this headline package basically does 90 percent of all the heavy lifting for you. And the rest of this is just kind of dialing it in so that you have a nice, smooth runway landing, depending on the audience.

25:05Jim Edwards:So, again, this part down here, who we are and, you know, testimonials and stuff. I mean, I would get rid of the testimonial thing first and then boom, boom. And then it could be brought to you by guaranteed response marketing, helping people since 1997 to be amazing and overcome their ED. So it's more about thinking in terms of the building blocks than it is exactly how much verbiage goes here. What's the word count? Should those be single line bullets and all that other stuff? No, what we're trying to do is capture the attention, build the desire, tie it to the thing that we're doing and make it easy for them to do their thing.