How to include a bonus discount for text message sign up in Omnisend multi-step forms.
The ability to communicate with your audience across multiple channels is a proven approach for delivering incremental revenue. To activate this multi channel approach you need to acquire subscriptions (opt ins) to both email and Text Messages.
Over the last 6 months we have monitored the sign up rates to email and Text Messages, where a multi-step popover form is used to acquire the opt in to email and SMS.
The overarching finding from this monitoring was that the opt in rate to Text Messages, was in 87% of cases, less than 50%, of the opt in rate to email.
In this post we outline an approach that is designed to close this gap between the Opt in rates for email and Text Messages.
Contents
- Create a 2-step sign up form in Omnisend
- Creating a new Audience segment
- Configuring the Welcome Automation
- How does offering a bonus discount impact sign up rates?
The foundations of the approach we now use to acquire Email and Text Message opt ins remain the same, with a Multi-Step Popover form being the mechanic of choice.
The key evolution to this approach has been the introduction of a Bonus Discount, which is used to incentivise contacts to opt into Text Messaging, in the second step of the sign up process.
The process we use to activate this dual discount approach is scoped below.
1. Create a multi-step sign up form in Omnisend
Omnisend provides a number of multi-step form templates in its form builder, these provide a good starting point from which to create your own multi-step form.
We have selected the Email & SMS branded Multi-Step Welcome discount
This template offers a 10% discount for signing up for email and then in the second step, prompts the subscriber to sign up for text messages, with the invite to “Join our VIP club”.
Using this as our starting template we now want to include a bonus discount, to incentivise subscribers to opt into text messages, having opted into email, in the first step.
In step 1 we have added the First Name field to the form and evolved the form design and copy. We set the discount offered for email sign up at 20% off the first order. When configuring the form the Button Action is set to Submit Form.
On submitting the form the subscriber is presented with step 2, which is the opportunity to “Score a bonus 5% off” by signing up to receive text messages. When configuring this form the Button Action for the “Submit for 25% Off” is set to Submit Form and the Button Action for the “No Thanks” button is set to Close Form.
2. Creating a new Audience segment
We now move onto setting up the Welcome Automation within Omnisend that will deliver the discount codes to the audience segments, relative to what they have opted into, be it, solely Email, or Email and Text Messages.
The first step is to create an audience segment, that will enable us to split the subscriber into the 2 segments. This segment uses the following filters:
- Subscription status is subscribed to email
and
- Subscription status is not subscribed to SMS
This Audience Segment set up in Omnisend is shown below.
3. Configuring the Welcome Automation
We select the Pre-Built Automation Workflow for the Welcome Automation.
The Message Trigger is Subscribed to Marketing and the Exit Conditions are Customer Places an Order. We set the Message Frequency to Skip contacts who have already been in this automation At Any Time
We now move onto splitting the contacts that enter this Automation Workflow, so we can offer the 20% and 25% discount to the subscribers, relative to what they signed up for, at point of subscription.
We add a Split to the Workflow which now has a Yes and No Path.
To configure the Split Settings we select to add a Split Rule.
We select Contact Properties as our Rule Type.
We select Segment as our Filter.
We then select our Segment as MGBWY Welcome Automation Split 20% and 25% which is the segment we set up in step 2 above.
The Yes Path for the split is all contacts who opted into just Email.
The No Path for the split is all contacts who opted into both Email and Text Messages.
For the Yes Path we develop a Welcome Automation workflow that features the 20% discount off the first order.
For the No Path we develop a Welcome Automation workflow that features the 25% discount off the first order.
4. How does offering a bonus discount impact sign up rates?
We have A/B split tested the approach outlined above versus a number of Multi Step Forms, that does not feature a bonus discount for opting into both Email and Text Messages.
These tests conclusively show that the addition of the 5% Bonus Discount significantly uplifts the opt in rate to Text Messages.
Here are the Average Sign up Rates to Text Messages, where the sign up step for Text Messages follows the Sign up for Email:
- Control: No Bonus discount offered for Text Message sign up, post sign up to Email: 4.2%
- Test: 5% Discount offered for Sign up to Text Messages, post sign up to Email: 6.1%
Our intention now is to test the levels of discount, to understand how the 25% discount should be allocated across the audience, so we’ll test offering a smaller discount for Email Sign up, 15%, and then a larger proportion of the discount for Text Message sign up, 10%.
