The object here is to get their contact information for follow ups and continue to market to them until they do buy   The “hard” opt-in page is like a funnel that narrows the focus of attention to your purpose, collecting their contact information. You briefly describe some benefit they can achieve, the more irresistible the better, and then offer only two options.  They can either submit their information to get your benefit (and it needs to be an instant benefit) or they can click away.  This is the “hard squeeze” for you offer no other choice but sign up or go away.

The soft squeeze has a couple of choices.  The popular opt-in box on the sidebar of your website or blog is a soft squeeze, and generally has the lowest lead capture percentage.  Another is similar to the hard squeeze however you give out more helpful information and begin the informational part of the selling process by describing a benefit in greater detail or identifying a “solvable” problem and then “set the hook” by teasing about the answer.  Now they must submit their contact info to get the rest of the story about the benefit or learn how to solve that problem you so artfully brought to a focus.

Which method works best? Both under different circumstances.  The only choice we have as marketers is to set up both types and drive traffic to each one separately and measure the results.  A marketer is always testing to try and improve results, at least in major markets.  Once you have a baseline of results that becomes your “control” and you can continue to work on improvements to increase opt-ins versus visitors.  Whether you go hard or soft is completely up to you. Which works better (after testing) is up to your individual market circumstance.