Getting email opt-ins has become quite the challenge in 2014, especially if you’re still using a basic opt-in form in the sidebar.
People are simply no longer that receptive to that kind of stuff, no matter what your offer is. It’s probably safe to say that opt-in boxes have started to suffer from their own case of banner blindness.
Nonetheless, there’s still a number of ways to fix the odds slightly in your favor.
One of them are popups.
In their standard form, popups appear either immediately when a visitor hits your site, or with a small delay.
Most of the modern popups offered by various WordPress plugins are immune to tools like AdBlock, and they work on all standard browsers and devices. This makes them a good enough tool to start with.
However, they are not a fail-proof solution because you are still interrupting your visitors on their way to your content.
It’s basically a hit-or-miss scenario. Sometimes the visitor is ready to opt-in, despite being interrupted. But most of the time they are not.
Luckily, there’s a new thing around that can fix that.
The trend is called “on-click popup” or “link popup.” The whole idea is to display a popup message only when the visitor clicks a certain link somewhere on your site.
A good way to utilize this tactic is to tell your visitors to click on the link to get your free giveaway, but once they do, instead of going directly to the giveaway, a popup message appears containing the opt-in box.
Despite the additional step that the visitor has to take to opt-in, this tactic is getting very good reviews in the internet marketing space. As it turns out, people are less likely to abandon the opt-in after they’ve already taken the initial step and clicked the link.
This concept has been tested and introduced to the mainstream of online business by the folks at LeadPages. This was a technique they used themselves for their giveaways, and then decided to turn it into a new module – LeadBoxes.
At the time of writing, LeadPages is the best way of getting the “on-click popup” functionality. It integrates with every popular email service provider, and offers an easy-to-use interface.
The only downside is that it does require a small investment on your part.
Here’s how to set everything up:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7IzUrinQp8
For a free alternative, you can look into two WordPress plugins that do offer something similar, but they are much less user-friendly and force you to do a lot of tuning up:
- Onclick Popup. Very simple and lightweight plugin. The on-click popup is its only functionality.
- WP Popup Plugin. On-click popups are one of the many features of this plugin. There’s built-in MailChimp integration.
In short, on-click popups are surely an interesting new solution for the overwhelming “opt-in blindness.”