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How to Create an Opt-in Page on WordPress that Converts 

Editorial Team
February 9, 2024
How to Create an Opt-in Page on WordPress that Converts 

Do you want to create an Opt-in page on WordPress that converts more visitors into leads?

The Opt-in page serves as the initial gateway to every lead generation funnel, marking the starting point of a user's journey toward engagement and conversion.

About 76% of site visitors are not sales-ready, so directing them to a sales page will be ineffective.

Instead, adding them to your email list and nurturing them with your product information is more likely to get them to make a purchase decision.

For that, firstly, it’s important that you focus on making a solid opt-in page that converts. A well-made optin page with a perfect offer will hook the client at the get-go and convince them to give out their contact.

In this post, we'll cover some effective opt-in page offer ideas, transformative list-building strategies, and the step-by-step process of how to create an opt-in page in WordPress.

Let's get started!

What is an Opt-in Page?

An opt-in page, also known as a lead capture page or squeeze page, is a specific type of web page designed to capture a user’s contact information in exchange for something valuable. This page is an integral part of lead generation strategies and sales funnels.

An opt-in page aims to persuade visitors with some lucrative leads to share their contact information and grant you permission to communicate with them in the future. 

Once visitors opt in, they become part of your email list, allowing you to nurture and engage them with further content, offers, and marketing messages. 

An effective opt-in page is clear, concise, and focuses on providing value to the visitor in exchange for their information

What is the Difference Between a Landing Page and an Opt-in Page?

A landing page is a web page designed with a specific goal, such as converting visitors into leads or customers. On the other hand, an opt-in page is designed to turn visitors into leads by collecting their email addresses of contact information.

So, the main difference between a landing page vs. an opt-in page lies in their goals and intended outcomes.

A landing page can have various conversion goals, such as making a sale, generating leads, driving downloads, or promoting a specific event, etc., beyond just capturing email addresses.  On the other hand, an opt-in page is specifically focused on collecting your visitor’s contact information for future marketing efforts. 

If we talk about use cases, landing pages are used in various marketing contexts, such as pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, social media campaigns, email marketing, etc. However, opt-in pages are only used to build an email subscriber list for email marketing campaigns

How to Choose the Right Opt-in Offer : 3 Things to Keep in Mind

Your opt-in offer or lead magnet must grab attention, reel in the users, and get them to share their email addresses.

Let's look at the important things you must keep in mind when thinking of an offer for your opt-in page:

#1: Keep it simple

Most marketers over-complicate things and try to overdeliver. The key is not to go overboard with it.

For example, if you are a coach who helps grow Instagram followers, don’t offer the whole course as a lead magnet on their opt-in page.

Offer a free cheat sheet on the "Best times to publish a post" or "Tips for creating emotionally engaging Instagram stories" to users.

The idea is to give them a head start on a path that leads toward your paid offering.

#2: Be relatable

As humans, we love to assign meaning to things around us, making them all relatable or personal.

A story influences how a person thinks, so presenting your opt-in copy in a manner that makes it interactive surely helps!

#3: Induce the fear of missing out

One thing people absolutely hate is being left out of the loop. Not knowing is a great evil that your users would want to avoid.

One way to push the FOMO level high is by providing some compelling testimonials on your opt-in page. This will get you a lot of conversions.

5 Opt-in Offers/Lead Magnets That Work Wonders

Coming up with an opt-in offer idea that appeals to your audience can seem a bit challenging.

You don't want to spend all your time and effort creating something that people don't want to download.

While messaging plays an important role, the actual offer is just as important.

Let's look at some products that can be pretty impressive lead magnets or opt in offers:

#1: Digital Books

eBooks make for great lead magnets. Easy to access, no shipping required, and hard to misplace.

Digital books encourage instant gratification as they are sent to the user when they sign up.

Here's an example from SmartBlogger:

Opt in page offer example from SmartBlogger

So, eBooks, cheat sheets, and swipe files are some great opt in offers to consider!

#2: Workshops / Webinars

Offering a workshop or replaying a webinar for free is sure to get some heads turned.

List out the merits of your offer along with all they’ll learn by the end of the event on your opt in page.

Including a preview of the workshop will work like a charm and help boost conversions.

Here's an example from Mindvalley, where they offer a short 1-minute preview of the workshop:

How to Create an Opt-in Page on WordPress that Converts 

This would immediately get people hooked, and they'll also get a sense of how you would be teaching them after they sign up.

Again, a great opt in offer idea!

#3: Drip Training

Providing all the content at once can often overwhelm people. Dripping content allows you to break your training into shorter, more manageable chunks.

Watching hours-long content in one sitting is a big commitment. But, 10 minutes a day for a week sounds more doable.

You have to convince people that you're not asking too much of them, and they don't need to make extraordinary efforts to consume your material.

Take a look at a marketing coach's opt-in offer:

An example of opt in page offer by Marketing Coach

We love how she says 16 ultra-short emails to lure people. Also, notice how she calls it a snackable course, letting people know that they're not signing up for something which requires a lot of their time.

You can use such offers on your opt in page.

#4: Free Trial Offer

Allowing your users to test-run the products or services you’re trying to sell is a genius marketing technique.

Giving them a taste of your main products would tell you about the genuinely interested audience.

Take a look at this offer on Traditional Cooking School; it's perfectly aligned with the paid offering:

Opt in page offer example of free trial offer by Traditional Cooking School

If you put an expiry on the free trial, it is likely to get more people to act on the offer to avoid losses.

Brands like Netflix and Spotify also work on this model, making it a brilliant lead magnet.

#5: Challenges

People love challenges, and these days challenges are in trend anyway.

Offer your prospects fixed duration challenges with actual results to look forward to, like - "Grow your Instagram profile by 1000 followers in 10 days".

What particularly makes a challenge interesting is the specificity of the result promised at the end of the engagement.

Here's an opt-in page example of a haircare challenge:

Opt in page example for 14 day haircare challenge

Your challenge should be aligned with your audience's goal, a goal they've been struggling to smash on their own.

This gives the users some excitement and builds a sense of connection with the others aiming for the same goal!

What Are The Key Elements of an Opt-in Page?

Certain aspects of an Opt-in landing page make it a success among users and generate leads for you.

The structure and the components of your opt-in page make the difference in the number of leads a page generates.

Some of these high-converting elements are:

Clear Heading

On average, 8 out of 20 people would only read the heading, while only two would read the copy as well. So the headline should clearly state the promise made on the page.

opt in page heading

Hero Image

Images speak louder than words, which can be verified by the hero image you choose for your opt-in page.

The hero image should be either product-focused or outcome-focused.

Avoid using stock images because they don’t capture attention.

WordPress opt in page hero image

Copy Length

The text on your opt-in page should have value added to it and shouldn’t just be written to increase word count.

The copy should be scannable for the readers’ convenience.

opt in page copy

Opt-in Form

The fewer the form fields, the higher the conversion rates.

Hubspot's study showed that as the number of form fields increased, the conversion rate went down by about 50%.

The ideal number of fields for opt-in forms is 2 (name and email), but these days even one is enough, as on most opt-in pages, you may only ask for the email addresses and not anything else.

opt in form

CTA Button

A ‘Call to Action’ button would direct your users to the next step, so this button needs to stand out from the rest of the page.

No one likes to click on the generic 'Sign up' or 'Submit' or 'Click here' buttons. Your audience has matured beyond that.

opt in form cta

Trust Builders

Every opt-in page of the funnel needs to have some trust-building elements that reassure the product and the seller.

These elements can be social proof like - testimonials, past results, media coverage, your story, and more.

wordpress opt in page reviews

How to Create an Opt-in Page in WordPress That Converts?

Here we will show how you can create an opt-in page from the WordPress dashboard to convert leads easily. 

To create an opt-in funnel, we will use FunnelKit Funnel Builder. This is the ultimate sales Funnel plugin for WordPress that lets you create high-converting opt-in funnels and sales funnels with opt-in pages, sales pages, custom checkouts, order bumps, one-click upsells, and thank-you pages.

Let’s install and activate the FunnelKit Funnel Builder before we dive deeper into the process. 

Step 1: Add a new opt-in funnel with a pre-built template

First, you need to create an opt-in funnel. For that, Go to FunnelKit ⇒ Funnels and click on “Create New Funnel.”

add new funnel

Now choose “Lead Funnels” as type and then your favorite page builder. We are going with Elementor here. After that, hover over the template you like and click on the “Preview” button.

Here we are choosing FunnelKit’s “Enchant” lead generation template. This template offers a free eBook in PDF format in exchange for the contact name and email address.

click preview enchant

Enchant Opt-in template two types of opt-in forms: Inline and Popup. With the line form, you can add an inline form with two fields, and with the popup you can add a popup form that appears after someone clicks on a button.

Note: If you are looking for a solution to how to create an opt-in page for free, then choose the inline form. The popup form is only available with the pro version of FunnelKit.

funnelkit opt in form two styles inline and popup

You can choose any opt-in form option you like. We are going with the inline option. Now to import this funnel click on “Import This Funnel,” provide a name, and click on “Done.”

import enchant as opt in funnel

This will import the opt-in funnel with two steps: the opt-in page and the confirmation page. 

Step 2: Customize the opt-in page

Now it’s time to customize the opt-in page. For that, click on the opt-in step. After that, click on the “Edit Elementor Template”.

edit opt in page

Now you can customize the content as per your needs. To customize any content, click on that element, and you will find customization options on the left-hand side menu. 

For example, you can update the title or main heading.

update heading opt in page

You can also change the form field width. Moreover, you can alter the CTA text, subtext, and submitting text.

update form field

In case you choose the pop-up type form, you can customize the progress bar, heading, button, etc, for the pop-up form.

pop up settings

After updating the form, make sure you update the content of all the sections to match your offer and brand. 

update content opt-in page

After making the changes, make sure to click on “Update” to save all the changes. 

Here is what the opt-in page looks like: 

opt in page preview

Step 3: Manage the opt-in form fields (optional)

FunnelKit lets you easily manage the fields on your opt-in form. The template we chose currently has two form fields: first name and email. 

If you want, you can add more fields by drag and drop on the Optin Form Fields section.

drag and drop last name as opt in form

If you want, you can remove any of the fields from your opt-in form. 

delete last name field from opt in form

You can rearrange the form field as well just by drag and drop. For example, you can make email the first field.

optfin form fields

Step 4: Send an email notification to your leads

Once users sign up, you can send them a confirmation email with a link to the freebie.

For that, move to the Actions Tab. Here Select “Yes” for the Lead Notification option.

After that, you can customize the email subject and body. To personalize the email body content, you can use different shortcodes given below the “Body” option.

You can also enable Admin notification if you want to receive notifications as soon as a lead gets captured.

optin notifications

After making the changes, make sure to hit “Save” to update.

That’s it. Your opt-in page is ready. Similarly, you can customize your opt-in confirmation page. 

🔔🔔 Note: Once you have the opt-funnel, you will want to send it to your favorite CRM, enabling you to continue communicating with leads and converting them. Learn how to send leads to your CRM from the WordPress Dashboard

Nurture Your Leads With Automated Emails for Maximum Conversion

Once you have the leads, you need to nurture them so they become loyal paying customers. To nurture your leads you need to leverage email marketing automation, where you can send users different email campaigns automatically.  

To run automated email campaigns, you can use FunnelKit Automations. With this automated tool, you can send triggered emails, such as 

5 Best Opt-in Page Examples 

Let’s have a look at some of the inspiring opt in page examples.

1. Social Triggers

First on our list, we have an opt-in page by Social Triggers run by Popular blogger Derek Halpern. This page reflects the blogger’s personality in a beautiful way. 

This opt-in page contains all the key elements, such as catchy headlines, hero images, CTA, and trust builders. 

smart trigger

2. Digital Marketer 

Next, we have an opt-in page by Digital Marketer. On this page, the bright blue and white colors keep the eyes captivated, and the hero image increases the pitch's attractive quotient. It also has a catchy headline.

Another good example of an opt in page

3. OK Dork

The opt-in page of OK Dork by Noah Kagan is another great example you can take inspiration from. This page is simple but effective. We really like the Image and the CTA. Clearly stating what the freebie is, along with the review section, works as a good motivation for the users to give out their email addresses.

ok dork

4. Double your freelancing

We really use the opt-in page by doubleyourfreelancing.com. What stands out the most about this page is that you highlight the benefit one will receive neatly in bullet points. This section effectively motivates users to give their email addresses in exchange. Along with the benefits section, the other parts are also well-designed.

double your freelencing

5. Scott H Young 

The opt-in page is created by Scott H Young, a popular personal development blogger. The page features a compelling headline that effectively describes the essence of the book. Additionally, there is a trust-building section labeled "As Seen In," showcasing the various platforms where this writer's work has been featured.

scott h young

Ready to Create Your First Opt-in Page in WordPress?

We’ve covered everything you need to create a high-converting opt-in page in WordPress, from different opt-in ideas to examples.

FunnelKit is a one-stop solution for all your funnel needs. You get everything you need to create a high-converting opt-in page for your business.

Apart from utility-based templates and contacts, another powerful feature of FunnelKit is A/B Testing.

With access to pre-built templates, amazing features, insights, and analytics, you have everything you need to build an Optin page of your own with FunnelKit.

All you need to do now is - pick an idea from the ones listed above, craft a compelling message, and get building your opt-in page!

So, are you ready to create your first opt-in page in WordPress?

Author: Editorial Team
The Editorial Team at FunnelKit (formerly WooFunnels) is a passionate group of writers and copy editors. We create well-researched posts on topics such as WordPress automation, sales funnels, online course creation, and more. We aim to deliver content that is interesting and actionable.
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