Do you sign up for stuff online?
The online world gives you an amazing opportunity to learn, and even more opportunity to get bombarded with all kinds if rubbish.
Giving out your email address whether for actually buying something, or signing up for a newsletter or mini-course is something that requires some thought. Many people are using different email addresses for different online functions. One for shopping, one for general sign ups and one as a throwaway address for getting one time access for something.
I have 2 questions for you.
Firstly, what do you sign up for online (and why??). The golden rule is that if you give someone your email address (this is usually what is given when you sign up for a newsletter / course / access to a white paper), you expect value / information / benefit in return. You also expect respect. You don’t want to be bombarded with rubbish, and there is that mutual understanding that if you do start getting irrelevant, uninteresting and useless communication, you are one click away from saying, goodbye and unsubscribing, or even worse, clicking that spam button.
Personally, I sign up for content that is going to increase my online marketing knowledge or provide me with access to something I am interested in. So, what about you?? What do you do?
The second question is around the sign up mechanism. This is something that has recently cropped up with client, and also got me thinking with this site here >> please have a look. I really like the way he has done this (you won’t know what I’m talking about unless you have a look!). It’s different, captures your attention and engages. I’ve tried to do this here on one of my sites, and used something called a hover box. This can be very irritating to some people but has been shown to give some excellent increases in sign up rates.
I’m interested to know whether innovative sign up mechanisms work for you or you prefer something fairly simple and not too pushy? I would be very grateful for some feedback here as I will be be able to use it in the near future. So, if you are reading this post, reading this blog, and usually don’t comment. STOP. Please take a couple of minutes and make your first comment now! Thanks! 
