The last thing any smart business wants to do is accidentally annoy or “chase off” website visitors in the pursuit of capturing email leads.
Why capture email addresses?
About 80 percent of business professionals say that email marketing increases customer retention, according to HubSpot. That and 59 percent of respondents say marketing emails influence their purchase decisions, according to SaleCycle.
The good news is that there are many ways to capture email leads without annoying people on your website. And you can pick any of our below recommendations that make sense for you.
Spoiler alert: We offer suggestions beyond just less-intrusive pop-up ads.
Your popup doesn’t appear until the end of your content
A common practice is to have a popup appear within so many seconds of a visitor landing on your content.
This runs the risk of losing your visitor before he or she has had time to be won over by your content itself.
By waiting until the content is over, that patience can lead to a higher conversion rate of those who finish your content. It appears more like the call-to-action (CTA) that it is rather than a barrier to your content.
Dive deeper with our eight tips to get more leads with popups
Embed a subscribe box at the end of your content
This is the same idea as the pop-up at the end of your content, except that when you embed a subscribe box, it’s not popping up at your visitor.
It’s an even less intrusive way to achieve the same thing.
Here is an example from our site – P.S., you can scroll to the bottom of the page to see it too.
You can design and embed the same subscribe box at the end of each of your blog posts, for example.
Slide in your request after so much of a page scroll
Not to be confused with “sliding into your DMs,” you can set up a slider pop-up at the bottom of your webpage that literally slides in on the bottom corner of the screen after a visitor scrolls through a chosen person of the webpage.
This is less intrusive and also appears at a time when your visitor is most engaged and more likely to want to subscribe to your newsletter for more content.
Your pop-up doesn’t appear until a user is about to exit
You may or may not be familiar with exit intent technology since it’s relatively newer.
If you haven’t, you’re in for a treat.
Exit intent is behavioral technology that understands the movements of website visitors and detects when they’re going to leave your site without making a purchase or giving you their information, according to Omniconvert.
Timing is everything
Therefore, exit intent popups appear at just the right time.
Again, they’re not perceived as a barrier in any way. They’re intended to catch that visitor’s attention before they leave, and they can be very successful.
See our 18 exit-intent tips to convert your website visitors before you lose them.
Offer a content upgrade to engaged visitors
Smart content marketers know that they shouldn’t give everything up for “free.”
One way to generate leads without annoying your website visitor is to offer enough content to engage and then deeper content in exchange for his or her email address.
For example, you’re reading our tips about capturing more email leads without chasing away your website visitors. We could offer you through a pop-up a more detailed email-capturing strategy guide that can be emailed to you.
Upgrades can include, but are not limited to:
- eBooks
- Webinars
- Free tools
- Templates
- Email courses
- Checklists
It’s about the allure of upgraded content for the visitor. The promise of value is upfront.
But to be clear, this does not have to be a pop-up. This can be as simple as an in-line link within your content.
Of course, this can be expanded to any number of content offers.
Dive deeper into premium content and how you can leverage it in your digital marketing.
Feature a permanent sticky top bar
As an alternative to deciding on the timing of a pop-up, you can have a standing, permanent top bar at the top of your page the entire time the visitor is engaging with your content.
The pro is that it’s constantly in your visitor’s sight while also not disrupting his or her experience.
The top-of-the-page sticky bar itself can be simple. You don’t have to overdesign it. Just make sure that it’s a clear CTA.
Consider a feature box on your homepage
A feature box is similar to the top-of-the-page sticky bar. It can vary in design, but typically, it’s a call to action that is on top of everything at the bottom of your screen usually when on your homepage.
Just like any other form of opt-in, it needs to be clear and compelling.
Experiment with a welcome home gate on your website
What’s a “home gate,” you might be asking?
Consider it as a splash screen that’s part of the homepage of your website, which typically is the most visited page of any website.
It’s an immediate CTA just below your navigation menu, designed to be eye-catching that you can still scroll past for more content on the homepage itself. Keep in mind that it’s not a pop-up. It’s basically the top portion of your homepage.
Create a dedicated landing page
What’s better than an entire webpage dedicated to the conversion of email subscriptions?
If designed well, the conversion rate can be high.
Key aspects that your landing page should have:
- An appealing offer to drive subscriptions (the sky is the limit here, depending on your brand and what makes the most sense)
- Clear call-to-action
- Clean, bright design
- Feature testimonials if applicable
Include a sidebar next to your content
Another less-intrusive way to capture email leads is to include a sidebar for subscribing next to your content.
Just like the top-of-the-page sticky bar, it can stay in sight of the visitor throughout, depending on the layout of your webpage.
Be sure that it’s eye-catching for the visitor and not an element that’s easy to overlook. It doesn’t have to be complicated to be effective.
Your pop-up can wait until the second pageview
Similar to waiting until the end of your content or when a website visitor is about to exit, you can wait until the second pageview for a pop-up to appear in order to capture email leads.
Doing so is an acknowledgment of the fact that a lot of your first-time visitors are likely arriving through a Google search in the hunt for an answer to a question that they have.
A pop-up immediately just gets in the way of their mission, but a pop-up on a second pageview on your website is a bet that this visitor is now more engaged with your content specifically. And therefore, now is the time to suggest subscribing to your email list.
The risk is that you will lose the opportunity to “catch” everyone who only appears on your website one time.
Impress visitors with a full-screen pop-up
A full-screen pop-up can be risky when it comes to annoying your website visitors and effectively capturing email leads.
It has to be well-designed and a very compelling offer to truly “wow” your visitors instead of annoying them.
A big giveaway could be enough to warrant a full-screen opt-in experience.
Just like with any other pop-up, keep the timing in mind. Avoid anything that is immediate.
It’s important to audit your website with fresh eyes. Where are the opportunities to capture email addresses from those arriving on your site? Remember that less can be more when first starting out, and you’ll want to start out simply, evaluate the performance and build from there.
