Are you working on developing an email marketing strategy, at the moment? Chances are you're hearing a lot of phrases like : 'lead capture', 'conversion rate' and 'churn'. There's certainly enough to consider when launching an email marketing channel for your brand. One of those choices is how you will record the emails of potential clients/customers, otherwise known as leads. In this post we'll look at the Pros and Cons of the 'Pop Up' as a lead capture form for your website when you are looking to grow (or even start!) a newsletter.
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Pros: Lead Capture & List Growth
Why not start with the strengths? Installing a Pop Up message on your website which links to your newsletter hosting service (i.e. Klaviyo, MailChimp, etc.) means that visitors on your site will immediately be greeted with the offer to subscribe to your mailing list when they first land on your website. This is good news! When you are building a newsletter mailing list you want to capture interest in the form of emails. Pop Ups are a very normalized, standard way of capturing leads to a website.
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The opportunities for engagement here are attractive. But a word to the wise: When you are designing a lead capture form such as a Pop Up for your website, it should take time and be done with deliberate decisions.
Some things to consider:
Will you offer a promo? Some brands offer a guaranteed 10% off promotion for newsletter signups. This requires an automated message to trigger in your sign up 'flow' sending a designated coupon code for you new subscriber. If you offer other promotions on your site, be sure to have your policy on 'stacking' promotions stated somewhere easily accessible for subscribers. (Or better yet, make sure on the back end that a user cannot apply more than 1 coupon code to a purchase.)
What will my Pop Up look like? There are as many styles of Pop Ups and lead form templates as there are birds in the sky. You can customise to your hearts content when designing. Want to know a subscribers first (and/or) last name? What about their birthday? You can have these fields applied to your form to collect information which might help with customizing communications down the line.
What do they receive? Do you have automated messaging already set up and ready to go when you launch your Pop Up? If the answer is no, put the Pop Up down! Users don't want to subscribe to a list and then receive a 'Welcome!' email days, weeks, or even hours later. Especially if you are offering a promotion they want to receive it instantly -- this affects conversion (sales) in the end. So be prepared with the various steps of your customer journey before you go turning on any advertising.
Cons: They're annoying (when done wrong!)
Now that you've explored the pros to Pop Ups on your site, it's time to flip the coin and consider why a Pop Up -- or at least, a generic one -- may not be right for your brand. It comes down to a simple equation: When you use Pop Ups there's a real chance that visitors to your website will be put off and click off before any information -- or sales -- change hands.
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Some things to consider:
Timing: Adjust how frequently visitors to your site, see the Pop Up. At Litir Marketing the rule of thumb we follow is once ever and within the first 10 seconds. Tweak those parameters over time but always remember to view your website as 'new' eyes as often as possible and take into consideration how frustrating it can be to be browsing and have a Pop Up appear once or twice in a session.
Appearance: How large is your Pop Up on mobile? While something may look reasonable on a desktop, remember when you are designing and launching a Pop Up that most users are going to be coming on to your site from mobile devices (especially if you are building up a channel such as email marketing). That means that your Pop Up will have to perform on a variety of screen sizes. Simple works! Earlier lead capture and detail such as birthday and surname were mentioned. Unless absolutely necessary, keep your Pop Up as simple as possible and as clean as possible. Oh, and make it easy to find the 'X' to quit!
Compromise:
So what can you do? You've heard right that Pop Ups are the way to capture leads. But it's not all cookie cutter. Some tips to get started are make sure you have the opportunity to adjust the timing and appearance of a Pop Up, and be specific about the offer or language you choose. But the best advice? Be sure to have a lead capture form embedded on at least on your home page, if not in more places. That way you can directly link back to the signup in future communications without having to rely on the Pop Up 100% of the time.
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Get in Touch.
Have a question about email marketing? Or marketing generally? We're here to help! Send us an email at liz@litirmarketing.com today.
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