What are email capture pop-ups?
Pop-ups are small windows that are displayed to your website’s visitors when your conditions are met. Other terms for email capture pop-ups are email pop-ups, website pop-ups and opt-in pop-ups.
Why pop-ups are good to use?
Pop-ups give your sign-up forms a huge increase in visibility. Adding a pop-up helps you make your signup form unmissable.
Also, pop-ups come with a lot of targeting and segmentation options. These options allow you to push targeted messages and offers that vastly increase the chances of your visitors joining your email list.
Since pop-ups are not embedded in your website but displayed on top of your content, they offer a lot of flexibility in terms of design. And yes, more creativity often means more leads! The average conversion rate of email capture pop-ups from a study by Wisepops was 3.75%. The higher performing pop-ups had an offer.
How to create email capture pop-ups
There are a number of things to consider when planning to implement a pop-up on your website.
1. Targeting
- Timing: What is the best timing for an email capture pop-up? A study has shown that the less time you wait, the more emails you’ll collect. However, the longer you wait, the higher your engagement rate will be. The best way to identify the exact timing that maximizes the conversions while reaching a reasonable conversion rate is to run an A/B test. You can test displaying your popups on landing, after 10 seconds, 20 seconds, etc.
- Define segments: To maximize your conversions the easiest method is to segment your audience and create a specific pop-up for each of your segments. This is a more advanced technique for consideration once you have your email pop-up optimized and growing your email database.
2. Your offer
There are a few ways to think about your offer for your email pop-up.
- Coupons: These are the most efficient way to convince your visitors to subscribe, including discounts or free shipping offers.
- Competitions: These are also good converting offers, such as ‘win a complete set-up of our face and body products’.
- Freebies: Free content like eBooks, infographics etc can also be a valuable offer.
3. Your copy
- State the benefits: Describe plain and simple what your subscribers will get when they sign up.
- Use humor: If you have an aversion to adding a pop-up to gather emails!
- Leverage your community: Everyone likes to be part of a club, to feel special. How about playing on that for your popup?
- Use FOMO: FOMO can help you convince your visitors to sign up immediately. No one ever wants to miss out on something they could have had!
The call-to-action is the other half of your pop-up copy. We suggest you step into your audiences shoes and think about the main benefit that they will get when they receive your emails. Here are a few examples of compelling calls-to-action:
- No offer: Join / Keep Me Posted / Keep me in the loop / Join the club / Count me in
- Discount: Get my coupon / Send me the offer / Activate the offer / I want that
- Freebie: Get the book / Download the book / Start learning / Send me the book
- Mystery offer: Get my surprise
4. Pop-up Design
Designing your popup is the last step of the process. Here are a few things for your consideration when designing your email pop-up:
- Separate mobile and desktop popups: Google has shared precise guidelines on mobile pop-up sizes. If you want to avoid an SEO penalty, your pop-up shouldn’t prevent your visitors from accessing the main content of the page, it shouldn’t be too large. On desktop, you have more flexibility to choose your pop-up size. NOTE: We recommend designing full-screen popups only when your popup is triggered on exit. Otherwise, you risk increasing your bounce rate.
- Add Visuals: Mobile is specific, as space is limited, we recommend avoiding visuals or sticking to small visuals. On desktop, you can try one of the following strategies, using a Product Visual which is particularly popular in eCommerce. It reminds the visitor of your brand mission while contributing to make your popup more appealing. Secondly, using a visual reminder of your offer. Finally, adding known logos to provide social proof and to reassure.
- Pick the Right Color: Choose a color that is both eye-catching and helps your CTA stand out (different from the dominant color in your pop-up). Choose a color that that matches your website
