Over the years, we have added a lot of powerful features in OptinMonster to help you increase your traffic, subscribers, and revenue.
Whenever we talk with customers at marketing events, one of the most common questions we get asked is: what are some of our favorite OptinMonster hacks to boost conversions?
Well, OptinMonster is the most advanced conversion optimization software in the market. So we actually have quite a few favorite hacks that we use to boost conversions. 22 to be exact.
Whether you’re just starting out, or you’re an OptinMonster veteran, you’ll definitely have several A-HA moments as you read through these hacks.
Some of these will only take you a few clicks to implement while others can take a few minutes.
That’s why we have added a step-by-step tutorial with each tip, so you can easily implement them in your campaigns.
Now this is a really long, in-depth post. To easily browse through the tips, feel free to use the table of contents below…
Table of Contents
Increase Conversions on Your Popular Pages
Boost Optins by 5X with Content Upgrades
Double Your Optins using Multiple Triggers
Improve Your Sales with Marketing Automation
Recover Abandoning Visitors with Onsite Retargeting
Improve Engagement with Custom Greetings
Increase Conversions with Welcome Gate
Convert Engaged Visitors into Buyers
Retarget Visitors with a Second Offer
Instantly Turn a Blog Post into a Lead Magnet
Reward New Subscribers with Instant Gratification
Boost Affiliate Earnings with Targeted Offers
Increase Your Mobile App Downloads
Get Personal with a Video Optin
Get More Facebook Likes
Grab Your Visitor’s Attention with Animations
Wow Your Subscribers with Dynamic Text Replacement
Boost Your Holiday Sales
Improve Your Email Open rates with Whitelisting
Boost Social Media Shares
Tweak Your Optins with a Split Test
Take OptinMonster Even Further with Canvas
Ready to get started? Let’s go!
1. Increase Conversions on Your Popular Pages
You may have heard of the 80/20 rule which says that 80% of your results usually come from 20% of your efforts. This is also true for online marketing: 80% of your conversions usually come from 20% of the pages on your site.
These pages are the most popular pages on your site. If you only optimize these pages, you can easily skyrocket your overall results.
With OptinMonster, you can optimize your popular pages by creating customized offers for them, and displaying those offers using exit-intent (or another trigger). But to do that, you’ll need to know which pages to optimize.
First, you need to have a Google Analytics account. If you don’t already have one, follow the instructions here to create a new account.
Next, you’ll need to integrate your Google Analytics account with your optin forms. Simply edit one of your optin forms, and click on the Analytics tab. From here, you can select your Google Analytics account and the website profile that you want to use.
Hit the green Save button to save your changes. Now, you’ll be able to start tracking your pageviews right away (even if you’re just getting started with your Google Analytics account).
To view your highest converting pages, go to your OptinMonster dashboard and click on the graph icon next to your optin form.
Now you will see an overview of your analytics for that optin. Scroll down to see your Top 10 Highest Converting Pages.
These are the 20% of your pages which yield 80% of your results!
Now that you know which pages you want to optimize, you can create custom lead magnets or content upgrades for them. Your lead magnet could be a checklist, eBook, mini course, case study… basically anything that relates specifically to the topic of that page or post.
Once you’ve created your custom lead magnet, create an optin form for it. Then, set it to be displayed on exit-intent (or another trigger).
To set this up, go to the Display Rules tab and enable exit-intent. Also enable “Visitors browsing specific pages”, set the dropdown menu to “exactly matches”, and enter the URL path for the page you want to optimize.
That’s it! Now your popular pages are optimized for conversions.
2. Boost Optins by 5X with Content Upgrades
Did you know that blog posts with content upgrades covert 5X more email optins?
A content upgrade is a lead magnet that is specific to a particular blog post. For example, if your blog post is about how to grow an herb garden, you could offer a PDF checklist of all the supplies needed for planting an herb garden.
Here’s how to add content upgrades to your site with OptinMonster:
First, go to your OptinMonster dashboard and click on the Create New Optin button.
Enter a title for your campaign, and select your website. Then select Lightbox as the optin type, and choose from any of our lightbox templates. (We’ll choose the Bullseye theme.)
Next, upload an image for your content upgrade and change the colors, fonts, etc. to match. All of this can be customized from the Optin tab.
Once you’re happy with how your content upgrade form looks, go to the Integrations tab and select your email provider from the dropdown menu. (Depending on your email provider, you’ll also have some additional options to choose from.)
Now it’s time to set up the delivery of your content upgrade.
There are several different ways to deliver it, but the easiest way is with our “Download” success theme. Simply go to Success > Switch Theme > Download to activate the Download theme and configure your download.
(For more details on this step, see Reward New Subscribers with Instant Gratification.)
Now it’s time to turn this content upgrade form into a two-step optin.
A two-step optin is a optin form that loads only after the user initiates the process by clicking on a link. We always recommend that you use a two-step optin for content upgrades because this converts the best by far.
To make your popup load on-click, go to the Display Rules tab. Under “When should the campaign appear?”, select MonsterLink (On-Click) and set the status to Active.
Once you’ve activated it, click on the blue Copy MonsterLink Code button.
Now the code for your MonsterLink has been copied to your clipboard.
Make sure to hit the Resume Campaign button at the top of the page before you proceed to the next step.
Next, you’ll need to paste the MonsterLink code you just copied into your blog post. Just paste it wherever you want your link to appear.
On our blog, we put the link inside a blue box like this:
After pasting the MonsterLink into your blog post, you’ll need to embed the optin form on your site. If you skip this step, nothing will happen when someone clicks on the link.
To embed the optin form itself, click on the Embed button at the top of your OptinMonster edit screen. From there, you will see three different options for embedding your optin form.
For specific instructions on embedding an optin form on many popular platforms, check out our documentation here.
That’s it! Now your content upgrade optin form will load when your visitors click on the link in your blog post. Here’s what our popup looks like on-click:
3. Double Your Optins by Using Multiple Triggers
Did you know that over 70% of your visitors abandon your website, never to return? You may have a timed popup on your site, but that won’t help to capture leads who leave your site before triggering it.
With OptinMonster, you can double your optins by displaying a campaign when someone is about to leave your site OR based on another trigger (depending on which happens first).
Here’s how to do it:
First, go to the Display Rules tab to set your first trigger. We’ll set our popup to appear when the user has scrolled down 50% of the page.
Then, add a second trigger by clicking on the + Add Ruleset link at the top of the screen.
You will be prompted to give this new ruleset a name. We’ll call ours “Exit-Intent”. Hit the green Save button to add your new ruleset.
From here, enable exit-intent by setting the “On-Exit-Intent” option to Active.
Hit the green Save button at the top of the screen to save your new settings.
Now, if a user scrolls down 50%, your popup will appear, and they won’t see it again. But– if the user starts to leave your site before scrolling, the popup will appear, and they won’t see it again after that.
That’s it! You’ve just killed two birds with one stone.
4. Improve Your Sales with Marketing Automation
You may know that it’s important to tailor your sales funnel to the needs and interests of your buyer persona. But what if you have more than one buyer persona?
Each persona has their own interests, so you should send them targeted emails based on that interest.
With OptinMonster, you can target specific buyer personas based on their interests, and then segment or tag those people accordingly in your email marketing service.
This allows you to tailor your email marketing campaigns to each of your buyer personas, improving your overall sales.
Let’s go ahead and set this up with OptinMonster.
For the purpose of this tutorial, let’s say that you want to segment visitors who are interested in Facebook advertising. You could create a targeted offer for those people, such as this:
Once you’ve created your targeted optin form, you’ll need to display it to the people who are interested in Facebook ads. For example, if you have a Facebook ads category on your blog, then you can target anyone who reads a post from that category.
To set this up, go to the Display Rules tab. Then under “Who should see this campaign?” select “Visitors browsing specific pages” and set the status to Active.
Next, select “contains” from the dropdown menu and enter the URL path for your Facebook ads category (e.g., blog/facebook-ads).
Now this popup will be displayed to visitors reading any post from the Facebook ads category.
Next, you’ll need to integrate this optin form with your email provider so that new subscribers are automatically tagged with the Facebook ads interest.
To do this, go to the Integrations tab. Then select your email provider. If your email provider supports tags or sequences, you’ll be able to select those under the Lead Options section.
That’s it! Now your optin form will be displayed to visitors with a specific interest. When they opt in, they will be automatically tagged with that interest, so you can send them a targeted series of emails.
For help with creating your autoresponders, check out our post on 6 steps to create an effective email autoresponder series.
5. Recover Abandoning Visitors with Onsite Retargeting
OptinMonster is not just limited to optin forms. You can also use OptinMonster’s onsite retargeting to convert users into customers before they leave.
Retargeting is when you bring a lead back to your offer after they abandon it. Retargeting usually requires paid advertising (like those ads that seemingly “follow you” around the web).
However, with OptinMonster’s onsite retargeting, you don’t have to pay a single cent to bring these leads back to your offers and increase your sales.
For example, let’s say someone visits your sales page, but doesn’t put the product in their cart. Maybe they still have some questions before they are ready to buy, or perhaps the offer just isn’t quite enticing enough for them.
You can retarget that person by detecting when they are about to abandon your site (using exit-intent). Then, you can bring them back to your offer, and/or help them to overcome any objections or obstacles in the way of making that purchase.
Here’s an example from our pricing page. This is what the user sees if they start to exit the page:
When you click on the “Get Started with OptinMonster” button, the popup closes and you return to the pricing page.
But when you click on the “I have a few questions first!” button, you’ll see a contact form that looks like this:
Here’s how to set up onsite retargeting with OptinMonster.
First, create a new optin form using one of our lightbox templates.
Next, you’ll need to have Yes/No buttons enabled. Go to the Yes/No tab, and set the slider to the ON position to enable them.
You may also want to select from one of our Yes/No themes by clicking the blue “Switch Theme” button. (For this tutorial, we are using the Charted Yes/No theme.)
Now you need to set the actions for your Yes/No buttons.
First, we’ll change the text for the Yes button to “Ask a Question”. Simply enter the new copy for your button into the Yes Text field to change it. Then, set the Yes Action to “Show an optin form”.
Next, we are going to change the No Text to “No thanks, I’m ready to get started now!”. We’ll also set the No Action to “Close the optin”.
Now our popup looks like this.
Next, you’ll need to change the form that appears when the “Ask a Question” button is clicked.
Go to the Optin tab to customize your optin form. Here’s what ours looks like (we used the Simple theme).
If you want to add more form fields, you can choose our Canvas theme instead, which allows you to create anything from scratch. You can even add a WordPress shortcode to your popup. (For more details, see the section on Canvas.)
Finally, make sure that you set this popup to appear on exit-intent by going to the Display Rules tab and enabling “On Exit-Intent”.
You can set it to appear on your pricing page by enabling “Visitors browsing specific pages”. Then set it to show when the URL path exactly matches the URL for your pricing page.
That’s it! Now you are all set to recover abandoning leads using onsite retargeting.
6. Improve Engagement with Custom Greetings
The more targeted your offer, the higher your conversion rate will be. It’s as simple as that. If you expect to receive traffic from a particular source (e.g. from a popular publication you’ve just been mentioned in), plan on greeting that traffic with a targeted offer.
Here’s an example of a custom greeting with a targeted offer.
(This popup was created using our Case Study template.)
With OptinMonster, you can display a custom greeting like this using referrer detection technology.
To set this up, go to the Display Rules tab and activate “Visitors from a specific traffic source (Referrer Detection)”.
Now you have a few different options to detect the source of your traffic. Since we’d like to target traffic coming from a specific website, we’ll set “Show when the referrer URL” to “contains”, and enter the main URL for that site.
Now, anyone who comes to your site from any page on that domain will see your customized greeting.
Enjoy the high engagement on that traffic!
7. Increase Conversions with Welcome Gate
As smart marketers know, sales (and even customer satisfaction) actually decrease with the number of choices available. This principle is very important to keep in mind when it comes to your website visitors.
If you want your users to be happy with their decision to opt in, then you’ll need to limit their choices as much as possible. The easier you can make the decision for them, the higher your conversions will be.
That’s why we created our fullscreen welcome gates. These optins minimize the choices on your site by making your call to action fill up the entire screen, keeping all other choices out of view. The links in your navigation bar, your recent blog posts, and any other elements on the page will not be visible until the user either opts out, or scrolls down the page.
To create a fullscreen welcome gate, simply go to your OptinMonster dashboard and create a new optin. Enter a title for your campaign, select your website, and select Fullscreen as your optin type. From here, you can choose from any of our fullscreen templates. (We’ll select the Estate theme.)
Next, you’ll be taken to the edit screen. You can make any styling modifications to your welcome gate from the Optin tab. We’ll upload a new background (featuring a woman looking toward the optin form– a strategy that helps with conversions). We’ll also add our own logo, change the copy, and modify the fonts and colors.
Now that your welcome gate looks the way you want, you’ll need to tell OptinMonster where you’d like it to load.
Go to the Display Rules tab to see your options. We want our welcome gate to appear on the homepage. To do that, select “Visitors browsing specific pages” and set the status slider to Active. Then select “is the homepage” from the dropdown menu.
Next, save your changes and hit the “Resume Campaign” button at the top of the screen.
Now your welcome gate is ready to be embedded on your site so you can see higher conversions on your homepage (or any page)!
For detailed instructions on embedding a welcome gate on many popular platforms, see our platforms doc.
8. Convert Engaged Visitors into Buyers
Wouldn’t it be great if you could target your most engaged visitors, and turn them into customers right away? Well with OptinMonster, you can.
People who have viewed 4 or more pages on your site are very interested in what you have to offer. Why not reward those people with an extra incentive to buy now?
If you sell information products, you could target these people with a popup that says, “Thanks for browsing my site! I’d like to give you a special discount on my course.”
Or, if you have an eCommerce site, you could offer a coupon code.
Here’s how to use OptinMonster to target your most engaged visitors and convert them into buyers.
First, start with one of our lightbox templates. (We’re using the Shopping theme.) Then, go ahead and edit the optin form with your own copy and image (from the Optin tab).
Next, click on the Yes/No tab to enable Yes/No buttons.
The actions for each button will already be set to the way you need them. When the Yes button is clicked, it will show the optin form, and when the No button is clicked it will close out the popup. Leave these button actions alone, but go ahead and change the copy, colors, fonts, etc. from this screen.
Now that your buttons look the way you want them to, let’s set the display rules for this popup.
Go to the Display Rules tab to view your options. Then click on “After ‘X’ seconds” and set the status to Active. We are going to set this popup to appear when time on page is at least 5 seconds.
Next, we’ll need to set this popup to only be displayed once the visitor has viewed at least 4 pages. To do this, scroll down and enable “Visitor has viewed ‘X’ pages”. Then set it to show when the number of pages the visitor has viewed is at least 4.
That’s it! Now your popup will appear to your most engaged visitors so you can convert them into buyers right away.
9. Retarget Visitors with a Second Offer
Not everyone is going to opt in to the first popup you show them. In fact, many people will close out of your offer without even reading it at all. Do you have a plan for bringing those visitors back to your sales funnel?
With OptinMonster, you can set a second offer to appear if someone closes the first offer. These “second chance” offers convert really well, so there is absolutely no reason not to use them.
We recommend setting this up by showing a different optin type for the second chance offer.
For example, you could display a timed popup on the first page view, like this.
If the user opts in to this popup, then they won’t see this offer again.
But– if they close out of this popup, then they will see a slide-in on their second page view, like this.
To set this up, you’ll need to create a popup using one of our lightbox templates. Then, go to the Display Rules tab and set it to appear after a certain number of seconds (we’ll use 5).
Next, you’ll need to create a second optin by choosing from one of our other templates, such as a slide-in or a floating bar.
Then, go to the Display Rules tab for that optin and activate “Visitor has interacted with a campaign”. Set it to show when “the visitor has closed”, and select the first optin form you created from the dropdown menu.
You’ll also need to activate “Visitor has viewed ‘X’ pages” and set “Show when the number of pages the visitor has viewed is at least” to 2.
This way, they won’t see two optin forms on the same pageview. You only want the second chance offer to appear once they navigate to the 2nd page on your site.
That’s it! Now you can retarget visitors who close out of your first popup by giving them a second chance to convert.
10. Instantly Turn a Blog Post into a Lead Magnet
Want to spend less time creating lead magnets? With OptinMonster’s content gating feature, you can instantly turn any blog post into a lead magnet.
Content gating is when users can only see your content once they enter their email. It works really well as an incentive to get people to join your email list. And the best part is, you don’t have to create anything to download because the content lives right on your site.
You can even partially gate your blog posts so you can continue to use them for driving organic traffic.
For example, let’s say you have a list post of “30 Cute & Easy Hairstyles for Girls”. You could allow anyone to read the first 18 styles, but in order to access the final 12 they will have to enter their email address.
To set this up, you’ll need to start with one of our after post/in-line optin form templates. (We’ll use the Gourmet theme.)
Next, change the copy, colors, font, etc. from the Optin tab.
Once your optin form looks the way you want, scroll down to the Content Blocking section. Set “Block Content Below Optin?” to ON. Then choose the content blocking method that you prefer (we’ll leave it as “obfuscation”). You can also specify how long the gated content should be displayed after a visitor has successfully opted in (we’ll use 365 days).
Once you are satisfied with your settings, set your campaign to Live by clicking on Resume Campaign from the top of your screen.
Next, you’ll need to embed the optin form in your post, just above the content that you want to be gated.
Click on the Embed link at the top of the edit screen to see three different options for embedding your optin form.
Paste the embed code (or the shortcode if you are using WordPress) just above the content that you want gated.
For more help with embedding a content blocking optin, read our support doc here.
Now, all the content below your optin form will be blocked until the user enters their email address.
That’s it! Now you’ve instantly turned your blog post into a lead magnet.
11. Reward New Subscribers with Instant Gratification
If you promise to deliver a lead magnet, you better deliver it as soon as possible. People hate waiting to receive something, and they love instant gratification.
There are several different ways to deliver a download with OptinMonster, The quickest way is by using a success message with a download link. Here’s how to do it.
First, you’ll need to go to the edit screen for your optin form and select the Success tab.
Under Success Action, select “Display a success theme”. Then, click on the blue Switch Theme button and choose the Download theme.
Go ahead and modify the copy, colors, images, etc. for your success message.
Then, scroll down to the Download Location field and enter the URL for your download.
That’s it! Now your users can download their lead magnet instantly, right after they enter their email address.
12. Boost Affiliate Earnings with Targeted Offers
Do you sell affiliate products on your site? You probably have some great content about those offers. But are you doing everything you can to make that content convert?
For example, you may have a review on your site for an affiliate product. When someone visits that review, you shouldn’t let them go without seeing your affiliate offer one more time.
OptinMonster’s exit-intent technology allows you to detect when someone is about to leave your product review post, so you can redirect them to the affiliate offer before they leave your site forever.
To set this up, first choose from one of our lightbox templates. For this tutorial, we’ll choose the Bullseye theme.
Next, go ahead and upload an image for your affiliate offer.
We also changed the footer color and the footer border color to match our image.
Now it’s time to add a call to action. Go to the Yes/No tab to enable Yes/No buttons.
Then change the copy, colors, etc. to match your affiliate offer.
From the “Yes Action” dropdown menu, select “Redirect to a new page”, and then enter your affiliate link into the “Yes Redirect URL”.
Now your affiliate popup is designed and ready to go. It’s time to set the display rules!
Go to the Display Rules tab and enable exit-intent.
Then, scroll down and enable “Visitors browsing specific pages”. Choose “exactly matches” from the dropdown menu and enter the URL path for your product review page.
That’s it! Now your exit-intent popup is ready to boost your affiliate earnings.
13. Increase Your Mobile App Downloads
Do you want more users to download your mobile app? OptinMonster allows you to create popups specifically for mobile users, so you can prompt them to download your app.
To create a mobile popup, start with one of our many mobile themes. For this tutorial, we’ll choose the Entice theme.
Go ahead and edit your popup’s appearance, copy, etc.
Then go to the Yes/No tab to enable Yes/No buttons.
If you have just one download link, then you can disable the No button. We’ll keep both buttons enabled so that users can download our app on iTunes or on Google Play.
Go ahead and change the Yes Text to “Download for iPhone” and change the Yes Action to “Redirect to a new page”. Then enter the iTunes URL for your app into the Yes Redirect URL field.
Repeat the same process to make your No button redirect to the Google Play URL for your app.
Now it’s time to set your Display Rules and make your popup appear on the devices you choose.
In this case, we only want our popup to appear on phones (not tablets). So, we’ll go to Display Rules > Visitors on a specific device and set it to show when the visitor is on a phone.
That’s it! Now users who view your site from their phones will be prompted to download your mobile app.
14. Get Personal with a Video Optin
Videos are a really great way to grow your brand, make your optins more personal, and help your prospects feel closer to you. You can add a video to your optin form very simply with OptinMonster.
All you have to do to add a video is select the Lightbox optin type and choose the Theater theme.
The Theater theme will allow you add a video that has been uploaded anywhere on the web, including YouTube, Vimeo, Wistia or your own site.
To add your video, go to the Optin tab and scroll down to Design Fields. From there, you’ll be able to add the URL for the video you want to embed.
That’s it! Now you can use a video to make your optins more personal, convert better, and build your brand.
15. Get More Facebook Likes
Want to boost your Facebook likes? The perfect time to do it is right after someone has just subscribed. These people are very interested in what you have to offer, so they are the perfect candidates for your fan page.
With OptinMonster, you can add a call to action to like your Facebook page immediately after someone opts in to your email list. Here’s how to do it.
First, edit one of your optin forms. Then click on the Success tab, and click on the blue “Switch Theme” button.
Next, select the “Liked” theme.
Now, you will be able to customize this call to action by adding the URL for your Facebook page under the “Facebook Page URL” field. Click on the “Reload Like Box” button to update it, and then save your changes.
Now your success message will look something like this.
That’s it! Now you can start getting more Facebook likes right after someone opts in to your email list.
16. Grab Your Visitor’s Attention with Animations
Want to really grab your visitor’s attention? A really cool feature that OptinMonster has is the ability to add animations. Let’s get started adding animations to your popups.
First, go ahead and create a lightbox optin form (or edit an existing one). For the purpose of this tutorial, we’ll select the Overlayed lightbox template.
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