Facebook Optimization: What’s the Best Way to Increase Email Signups?
Now that Facebook uses iFrames, organizations can embed dynamic content, including email signup fields, directly into their Facebook Pages.
The general assumption within the social media world is that Facebook users don’t like to be routed away from Facebook. This implies that it would be more effective to embed an email signup form in a Facebook Page rather than push users to an external form.
But wait: There’s also a line of thinking that Facebook users don’t like to provide their email addresses on Facebook because they’ve become conditioned to the opt-in action of “Like.”
To attempt to resolve this debate — and improve our clients’ conversions — we’ve been running a series of experiments to test the effectiveness of embedding an email signup field directly onto a Facebook Page. There’s still more testing to be done, but the results so far have been a bit surprising.
The Test
We ran two identical Facebook advertisements, one driving traffic to a petition that asks for the user’s name, email address, and ZIP code, and another linking to a Facebook Page with an iFrame containing the exact same form fields.
Everything about the forms were identical. The only variable was where they were housed: a Facebook Page versus a website landing page.
More than 14,000 clicks and 5,700 email signups later, we had results:
Dead even. With over 98% statistical significance, we concluded that there is virtually no difference in conversion rates between an email signup form embedded on a website and one embedded on a Facebook Page. While these results may not be as sexy as proving one side right and the other wrong, the data is still compelling.
Never Stop Testing
Testing and optimization are among the core aspects of our media planning approach. What may be true for one organization may not be true for another. No two online constituencies display exactly the same behavior. Every plan we put together is influenced by the results of past tests — and involves plenty of testing of its own.
Evan Moody is an online advertising associate at Blue State Digital.
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