The best signup forms for high conversions (Omnisend research)

Here at Omnisend, we decided to analyze over 128,000 email campaigns to see which signup forms performed best. This included examining automated emails sent by over 7,200 ecommerce brands—and what we discovered was a fascinating insight into utilizing signup forms.

Get Omnisend’s newest email marketing reports as they are made. For insights into signup forms and more, check out our Ecommerce Email Marketing Statistics.

Here’s a summary of the findings that we’ll explore in-depth below:

• While popups (immediate, exit-intent, etc.) were the most popular signup form, they also have the second-lowest conversion rate (3%)
• Landing pages, the least popular signup form, have the highest conversion rate (23%), followed by the interactive Wheel of Fortune (10%)
• The most popular combination is to ask for an email address and name (7%), followed by email address and birthdate (5.7%)
• The highest-converting number of fields is three, meaning if you ask for three pieces of information, you’ll have an average conversion rate of 10%

We didn’t just want to look at which form had the best signup rates. We also wanted to see what information and what number of fields lead to the best conversions.

Let’s take a deep look at the numbers and what it means for your ecommerce business.

The highest-converting signup forms

When it comes to looking at this particular data set, it’s important to take these numbers with a grain of salt. Naturally, this is true with all data and statistics.

In the summary above, we noted that popups had the second-lowest signup rate (3%), and that landing pages had the highest signup rate (23%).

However, popups also make up more than 66% of all enabled signup forms, whereas landing pages are the least enabled, making up only 5.1% of enabled signup forms.

Let’s look at the data below so we can have a clearer picture:

Here you can see the situation. Popups are 13 times as popular as landing pages. With this in mind, it makes sense that, with more usage, the numbers are going to be affected.

It’s also important to look at the effectiveness of the signup form, such as how often it’s viewed.

We’re expecting to see popups being viewed the most since, well, that’s what they’re there for.

To appear to a visitor immediately or after some steps (such as x amount of clicks or the visitor attempting to leave).

However, as seen below, the Wheel of Fortune interactive signup form surprisingly has the best average views for each form:

When it’s plotted against the average signup rate, we can see that the Wheel of Fortune is a pretty good choice. It has a great conversion rate (10%) and the highest average view (6784 views/form).

What information to ask for in your signup forms

Let’s be straight-forward here. The standard information you’re asking for is your visitors’ email addresses.

That’s the whole point of email marketing or marketing automation—to allow you to communicate to your visitors.

Of course, the preferred way is via email. However, there are other pieces of information you can get from your visitors that can really help your marketing efforts.

For example, we’ve gushed over the amazing value of birthday emails and text message marketing over and over here.

It’s no surprise though that if you don’t gather that information, such as a contact’s birthday and phone number, you won’t be able to use it.

This leaves the essential question—which piece of information, in addition to the email address, leads to the best conversions?

Usually ecommerce marketers are scared to ask for too much information, but we wanted to check that against reality.

Here we’re looking at the best combination of fields (email address + what?):

As you can see, the combination for email + first name is the most popular. More than half of all signup forms used these fields. After that, the country and birthdate are the most popular.

To clarify, if you’re wondering why the percentage counts don’t add up to 100, it’s because we’ve removed some smaller fields for greater clarity.

As far as effectiveness, the signup rate does a bit of a dance. Surprisingly though, the email + phone number combination seems to have the highest signup rate.

However, taken with a grain of salt, we can see that the next best signup rate is the classic email address + name. After all, it only makes up less than 3% of all signup form fields.

The popularity and signup rate make this a great combination to use on your own signup forms.

It’s worth noting that the birthdate also does pretty well—meaning you can finally use the birthday automation.

However, the information you need to collect depends on the specific needs of your business. So, you might want to consider an alternative.

OptinMonster, a popular lead generation software used by over 1,213,437+ websites, offers a Field Mapping feature that lets you add any type of field to your signup forms, including custom text areas, phone fields, radio buttons, number fields, lists, and more.

With full control over your signup form fields, you can decide exactly what information your business should collect. Plus, you can use the built-in A/B testing to determine how many fields and which combinations of fields result in the highest conversions.

How much information you should ask for

We’ve all heard that asking too much information from your visitors can lead to lower conversion rates.

We wanted to test that by seeing what the conversion rates are based on how much information is being asked.

The default mandatory field is email address. But what if you wanted, as we saw above, to ask for two additional pieces of information—name and birthdate?

Or even more so, with four additional fields—name, birthdate, country, and phone number?

Would your conversion rates drop dramatically?

Let’s look at the average conversion rates, keeping in mind the percentage of signup forms in use:

As you can see here, the most popular amount of fields, that is, requested information, is one, making up 88% of all enabled signup forms.

With that, we’ve got a pretty good signup rate of 7%.

However, it certainly does dwarf the other amount of fields. With this in mind, let’s do the same chart starting at two pieces of information requested:

Here, the numbers are a bit closer, so it’s easier to draw conclusions when using at least two fields.

While asking for two pieces of information is most popular, the highest-converting is actually to ask for three pieces of information.

That comes in at a 10% conversion rate, which is a pretty good rate. After that, however, there is some marked decrease ineffectiveness.

We can say that you may see some increases in your signup rates if you ask up to three pieces of information from your visitors.

However, we’d advise you view this more as a test than an assurance. See if it works for your business. Test it out for a week or two, and then make your conclusions from that.

Summary

Taking all this data into context, we can state the following:

• Using popups with a single field (email address) will lead to consistent industry-leading rates
• Adding an addition field or two (in addition to email) can lead to higher signup rates
• Diversifying your signup forms with landing pages or interactive Wheel of Fortune can lead to higher signup rates
• Combining email address with name or birthdate can have a positive impact on your signup rates

Of course, here’s where our mantra comes into—ABT, always be testing and try various newsletter signup examples.

Test out variations on your store to see which signup forms and what information leads to better rates for you.