Additional sign-up form strategies
In addition to the best practices you just learned, let’s run through a few more that can help you build a more interactive sign-up experience:
- Increase urgency in form design.
- Collect text message consent with smart opt-in.
- Use forms to power back-in-stock messages.
- Run contests via forms.
Increase urgency in form design
Here’s a new list growth strategy to try out: increase urgency within your form design to emphasize the need for someone to take action quickly. There are many ways you can add urgency, for instance you can make it clear that an incentive is only lasting a short time, or run a contest that is time-sensitive. That said, let’s run through 2 specific form design techniques that you can add to make your forms even more interactive.
Try out either of the following strategies to increase form urgency:
- Add a countdown timer
A countdown timer shows the exact amount of time that is left for a site visitor to access an incentive to sign up. This adds urgency to your form, as they won’t want to miss out on potential savings. These work particularly well for flash sales, exclusive promotions, or holiday-specific savings. Learn how to add a countdown timer. - Add a sign-up counter
When you add a sign-up counter block to your form, it will display real-time submission counts. This adds a sense of social proof and community around subscribing. For example, someone may see that 200 people have signed up already today and feel compelled to do the same. Learn how to add a sign-up counter.
Collect text message consent with Smart Opt-in
If you collect text message consent from users, then Smart Opt-in is one of the fastest ways to grow your text message list and verify consent from site visitors.
What is Smart Opt-in?
With this feature enabled, a subscriber will receive a one-time code sent to their phone after subscribing. They can then autofill that confirmation code in your sign-up form (as long as they are on iOS and Android browsers) to verify their consent for SMS marketing. This streamlines the process for your subscriber while still following consent best practices for your brand.
Follow instructions on how to use Smart Opt-in to collect text message consent.
Use forms to power back-in-stock messages
Use sign-up forms to power back-in-stock messages. This will help you recover otherwise lost sales and learn more about your customers' interests in your current product inventory. You can add this form to specific product pages so interested shoppers can opt into alerts to be notified when the item is available again.
Still unsure how these forms power a better customer experience? Depending on your ecommerce platform you can either:
- Enable back-in-stock alerts
If you use an ecommerce store like Shopify, Bigcommerce, or Magento 2, you can embed a default code snippet on your site for back-in-stock subscriptions. Then, power Klaviyo’s back-in-stock flow, which is available in the flow library. This will send automated messages as soon as inventory is re-stocked. Learn how to enable back-in-stock alerts for your ecommerce platform. - Create an out-of-stock form and send campaign alerts
Alternatively, if your ecommerce integration does not have a default back-in-stock option, you can create an out-of-stock form in Klaviyo for each product you anticipate will sell out, especially during peak shopping seasons. From there, you can trigger a new flow based on sign-ups and send campaigns once you’ve restocked your inventory, using language like, "Limited stock available. Shop now.” to encourage conversions.
Run contests via forms
Contests can build excitement around sign-ups, incentivizing people to subscribe so they can take part in an exciting opportunity to win something. This can be powered either entirely in Klaviyo or using third-party integrations. In either case, you should add fields to your form (as shown in this example image) that collect information about shoppers and explain the benefits of entering the contest.
Let’s run through examples of how you can edit your forms to support contests:
- Run a contest entirely in Klaviyo
Create a new form in Klaviyo that routes new subscribers to a specific contest list. Add form fields that collect contact information and explain the benefits of taking part in the limited-time contest. Then, route subscribers specifically to this contest list, for alerts that are contest-specific. You can likewise add additional opt-in language to the form so that someone can subscribe to a marketing channel and continue receiving content post-contest. Learn how to build a contest sign-up form in Klaviyo. - Use third-party tools to power contest forms
Alternatively, if you integrate with another third-party provider like Wheelio, you can incorporate spin-to-win, scratch card, or slot-machine style games to your form to make them more interactive. This gamifies the sign up experience and can quickly draw attention to this contest-style form.