Are Content Upgrades The Future Of Email Sign-ups.

Once upon a time it was relatively easy to throw up an optin form in your sidebar and get people to subscribe to your blog.

If you offered an incentive to sign up, even better but the days of offering a generic ebook may be numbered.

Pop ups can work but they put off some readers and whilst they convert well, the quality of the conversion isn’t always that great.

So where do you go next to try and persuade people to subscribe to your blog?

Perhaps you might target each blog category with a different offer in your sidebar.

David Risley at Blog Marketing Academy has found that targeting categories in this way can increase sign ups.

As well as that or instead of that you could test out using content upgrades.

A content upgrade is bonus material you produce for a specific post. In order for people to get that bonus they provide you with their email address.

Take a look at Brian Dean’s case study at Backlinko about how to boost conversions by 529% in 45 minutes and you’ll see how effective content upgrades can be!

Perhaps he’s on to a winner there?

WHAT KIND OF THINGS CAN YOU USE FOR CONTENT UPGRADES?

What you can offer as a content upgrade is only limited by your imagination.

You do need to make sure it’s targeted to the particular blog post though and here’s some ideas that you could try.

BLOG POST PDF

One of the easiest ways to put together a content upgrade is to offer a PDF version of your blog post.

If your post is likely to be something that people would want to refer back to offline then this is a great way to add value to your post.

GUIDE OR REPORT

Something as simple as an ebook expanding on your points in the blog post may tempt people to sign up to your email list.

It doesn’t have to be any great length but it does need to be targeted to the blog post itself.

CHECKLIST

Checklists often have a higher perceived value than many other resources you might offer.

That’s because it’s something that people are able to follow step by step and tick off as they complete each section.

It makes them feel like they’re achieving something.

VIDEO

If you’re good with video then you could add extra depth to your content upgrades by offering a video.

You could talk about aspects of your blog post and go into more detail or even provide a mini course.

WHICH CONTENT UPGRADE TOOLS ARE AVAILABLE?

There are expensive tools available like LeadPages (minimum $37 per month) and Leads for SumoMe ($100 per annum).

I’ve tried LeadPages and it’s a great product but it’s also out of most bloggers’ price range. I’ve also used some SumoMe tools previously but never tried out the Leads option.

For the purpose of this post, I want to concentrate on the more realistic options available, both of which I recently purchased for myself.

CONTENT UPGRADES PRO

Content Upgrades Pro is a new plugin by Tim Soulo of BloggerJet and it’s currently in Beta.

Using shortcodes, you can add a link using five “fancy box” designs that when clicked will open a pop up. There are also five different designs available for the pop up.

Here’s an example:

With Content Upgrades Pro you can connect to your email provider or get subscriber email addresses sent to you by email. Currently it works with MailChimp, Aweber and GetResponse.

When someone clicks on your link and enters their email address into the pop up, you can specify the page where they get sent to.

The plugin only allows you to collect email addresses at present but adding the name field will be supported in the future as well as more pop up designs.

For each content upgrade you can send people to a page asking them to confirm their subscription or if they’re already on your list directly to a download page. Additionally you can send a custom email if you wish with each sign up.

With the plugin being in Beta, you can pick up Content Upgrades Pro for just $19. That’s a 50% discount on what the final released product will cost.

I like to get in on Beta products like this because you can grab a bargain as well as help iron out any bugs and even suggest improvements.

Important note: There’s also a free version of the plugin which has limited options. You can try it out to see what you think.