How To Create the Perfect Opt-In

If you haven’t created an opt-in for your email list yet, or haven’t even at least started brainstorming ideas of what to create for an opt-in, you need to hop on that train NOW. An opt-in is a piece of content that you offer to people for free – but the catch is, in order for them to get the content, they must sign up to become a subscriber to your email list.

An opt-in benefits both parties – you’re growing your email list while someone is getting a great piece of content for free. And, if done right, an opt-in can grow your list by an INSANE amount. However, in order for that to happen, you need to make sure that you’re creating an opt-in that people will really benefit from. In order to create an opt-in that will work for your audience, consider these questions below.

What is one thing your audience struggles with?
Do you know what your target audience needs help with? If yes, see what you can create that will help them to solve that problem. If no, create a survey and ask around to figure out what people struggle with the most. Being a social media consultant, I knew that people had a hard time creating a social media content calendar. There are SO many forms of content calendars out there, but finding the one with the right layout can be difficult. So, I felt it would be beneficial for me to share the content calendar that I personally use.

How can you display the solution to this problem?
Not only is coming up with the content important but figuring out how you’re going to display that information is important as well. Are you going to create a guide, a workbook, an ebook, or something else? You need to choose the format that would make the most sense. I shared my content calendar exactly the way that it was. If I wrote a guide on how to create the content calendar, nobody would benefit from it because to be honest, people don’t just don’t have the time to create the actual layout. Sharing the actual template itself made it easy for everyone who received it because all they had to do was download it, open it in Excel or Google Sheets, and start writing!

Where can you promote your opt-in and how?
Nobody is going to opt-in to your freebie if they don’t know about it. Find where your audience hangs out and promote it there. I’m pretty active in Facebook groups, so I shared it in the most popular groups. The key to promoting your opt-in is to actually not sound like you’re promoting – weird, right? All I did was take a screenshot of my calendar and how I filled it in for one of my clients and people LOVED it. Showing your audience how they can actually use the content you’re pushing reveals the benefits they would receive from it. In order for people to want your freebie, you need to show them how they can BENEFIT from it – because who wants something that they know they’re never going to use?

By asking myself these three questions and answering them, I grew my email list from 0 subscribers to 500+ overnight – yes, OVERNIGHT. And this was my first time ever creating an opt-in or even an email list! As I was using this content calendar for my clients, I literally came up with the idea, created an email list, and promoted it on Facebook. It’s easy – I promise! Have you created an opt-in before?