A very effective way of increasing email conversion rates is a popup which encourages your website visitor to become an email subscriber.
This can be very effective but sometimes this can be annoying to the visitor so it’s important to really consider is this the approach for you.
In this post we outline 3 different wordpress popups that can be used to increase email subscribers.
Do wordpress popups even work?
In the following image Christopher Penn shows what happened when he removed his popup. His subscriptions went way down immediately!
The immediate drop in email subscriptions was a a result of popups being disabled
There are many different popups and some work better than others. Here are 3 different applications which can be installed as WordPress plugins.
They all provide different type of popup functionality so consider what would work for you.
1. Optin Monster for Light Box, Floating Footer Bar or Slide In
Optin Monster is relatively new and has a Light Box (popup box), Floating Footer bar and an option for a box to slide in on the bottom corner of your screen. It’s easy to set up and has some cool features.
You start off by selecting the type of Optin box you want and start configuring it. In this example we are using a light box.
Configure the settings for your popup
Optin Title: Indicate the name of your optin box
Optin loading delay: Specify when the popup will appear
Optin cookie duration: You don’t want this popup to keep appearing to the same visitors so you can specify a delay in days
Require double opt in: Users will need to confirm their subscription
Load on second page view: You may not want this to appear on the first page the user is on the site for.
Use Exit intent: This is a really interesting feature. This monitors when the user has moved their mouse outside the main window. If they do this it’s likely they are exiting the site so this is a good time to popup something to grab their intention.
email providers settings: you can connect your opt in to your email provider of choice.
Here is an example of a light box I created using one of the templates. The configuration for creating this was very straight forward and it took about a minute in total.
An example of light box configuration
When you set up your slide in, light box or floating footer there are various configuration options. Here’s the options provided for the popup:
Load optin globally – If you want it available on all pages
Load optin exclusively on – If you want it to load on particular pages only
Load opt in on post categories – You may want the optin to only appear on specific categories
The reporting shows you impressions and conversions and is updated every 30 minutes. It also tracks the referrals and the conversions that each page gets.
There is also split testing available to see which works better for you. It’s easy to set up, you just clone (copy) your existing opt in and change what you want.
Summary
OptinMonster a really nicely designed, user friendly product that is easy to set up and use.
The feature which tracks when users goes off the current window and then displays a popup is a very useful and will help with conversion.
There is more functionality coming soon including a full screen takeover option.
2. Lead Player – Video Popup
Lead Player is a popup that appears across the bottom of a video. You can get it to appear at the start, end or after a specified interval.
If video is used a lot on your site you may want to embed popups within your video to collect your email subscribers or just have a clickable call to action.
If you have a video and want to add a popup opt-in you configure the following screen.
This is how you configure the email option
Here’s the configuration options:
Include Optin box – Enable or disable it
Ask for name – do you want to collect the name and email
email list integration – select the email marketing tool you use so the emails can go directly into this
Headline – first line of text
Text – enter any additional sub text
Location – do you want it to appear at the start, during the video (you can specify a time) or at the end.
Allow skipping – do you want people to be able to bypass this option box
Here’s an example of the popup that appears at the time you specified (i.e. start, end of somewhere during the video)
Lead Player popups up based on the time you configure
You can also have a popup which is clickable which brings you to specified page (e.g a landing page with an e-mail subscription).
Summary
If video is a key part to what you do you should considering using Lead Player for increasing subscriptions directly within your videos.
3. Welcome Gate App – A cross between a popup and a squeeze page
The welcome gate app replaces your full screen with an alternative screen when you go to a home page of a website.
So if you are a first time visitor to the site you get the welcome screen first instead of the main page.
On this welcome page you can try to convince people to subscribe to your email list.
If you’re not a first time visitor then you can redirect people off to your main page.
Here’s an example. If you go to Mixergy.com as a first time user this is the screen you see:
This is the welcome screen for first time users
If you go to Mixergy the next time then you see their normal home page.
This is the normal front page for non first time users.
When you install this software there is a standard welcome page provided that is highly customizable. You can enter in your header information, body content, add testimonials, add clear call to action and integrate with your email service provider.
Summary
The welcome gate is a powerful way of building email subscribers particularly if your traffic comes to your home page.
DJ Waldow (expert in email marketing) reckons that over 30% of his email subscribers come from the welcome gate.
Would I implement the welcome gate? I prefer using the feature image ( subscription banner at the top) on my home page which achieves good conversion and is not as pushy. But that’s just me, a welcome gate could be suitable to you.
Final Comments
Opt in email marketing is great but sometimes you give your visitors a little encouragement!
If you’re not optimizing your email conversion process you are loosing a lot of potential email subscribers.
There is no magic for coming up with the best email conversion process for you. It varies depending on your site and type of visitors. So you need software to test it out.
What do you use to improve email conversion?
What has worked or not worked for you?
photo credit: Horia Varlan via photopin cc
The post WordPress Popups: 3 Tools to Dramatically Increase eMail Conversion appeared first on RazorSocial and was written by Ian Cleary