How To Make A Popup That Benefits Opt-Ins Rather Than Hurting Them

When most people think about popup windows, they have a bad association.

That’s because we’ve all dealt with popup windows that won’t close, popup windows that act like “whack a mole,” with many windows popping at the same time, and other annoying situations.

As a result, you may believe that you should not subject your website users to popups.

You are correct – you really should NOT subject your visitors to irritating popups because they will undoubtedly reduce your opt-in rates.

However, a well-timed and polished popup benefits both your visitors and your opt-in rates, therefore you should start employing them.

So, how can you design a useful, beneficial popup? That is the focus of this article.

Using popups is an important part of your overall email marketing strategy and shouldn’t be overlooked.

Let’s get this party started…

Step 1: Stay Away From Tricks Or Annoyances

The first thing you should do is prevent any type of popup that tries to fool or annoy users. To that purpose, stay away from the following:

Numerous popups showing on the same page. (Let’s be honest, one is more than enough.)
Popups that generate a new one every time the previous one is closed.
Inability to close popups
Popups that are virtually impossible to close, such as those with small close buttons and ones that can only be closed by using something like the “esc” key.

And similar ploys. Remember, your purpose is to serve individuals by offering them something useful through the popup. You want users to appreciate your popup rather than be so angry that they swear never to return to your site again!

Step 2: Write Your Popup’s Copy

You must now decide what will be displayed in your popup. This would best be a concise piece of writing that encourages individuals to sign up to your mailing list.

To that purpose, you can design your popup copy using the guidelines from this lesson.

The difference is that this content will be even shorter, consisting of a headline, along with a few perks, and a call-to-action in addition to your opt-in form.

The key to creating a successful popup is to link it directly to the material that the visitor was just browsing.

This means that both the sales text and the lead magnet or other opt-in offer are directly relevant to what the visitor was viewing.

To clear things up for you, let’s look at a couple of quick examples:

Example 1: If someone is viewing a blog post about weight loss, your popup could give them even more weight loss ideas by offering them a free report or newsletter.

Example 2: If someone visits a dog training sales page, you could give them a free video on dog training and maybe even a discount on the product or service they were looking at.

Step 3: Decide On The Appearance

The next part is to figure out how and when your popup should appear.

In terms of timing, you have a few options:

Showing up as soon as anybody visits your page.
Showing after a certain amount of time (for example, 30 seconds after someone arrives on the page).
Showing on the exit or with the exit intent (this means that it appears if the visitor is going to leave your page).

Important…

You should generally avoid popups that show as soon as a visitor reaches the page.

They haven’t even had a chance to read the page/post to see what it’s about, thus any popup box will be quickly closed, most likely without even glancing at it, because they want to find out what the main page is all about.

When it will appear depends on whatever it is you’re giving away and where it appears on the page.

If you’re using a popup box on a sales page, for example, you would be better off using an exit intent popup box.

You can keep the sales page’s focus on buying a product this way, but if they decide to leave without buying, you can employ the popup box to encourage them to sign up to your email list.

The design of your popup is the second factor to consider. There are several options here as well. Just make sure the prospect can easily close the popup box if they want to.

The main screen is darkened by a lightbox type popup, allowing visitors to focus on the popup. The lightbox also nearly fills the whole screen, so it’s hard for the reader to overlook it.
The standard popup, which is a smaller window that will appear above or below the main page, is another alternative.
Another alternative is the slider style popup in which the popup can slide in from either the top, bottom, or either side of the screen. This popup is slightly different from the rest, and it’s meant to grab your attention.

It’s a pretty good idea to perform some testing to determine which styles your visitors respond to the most in order to figure out which one is best for you.

This brings us to the final phase…

Step 4: Monitor And Test

Testing and tracking your popup windows is the only real way to know for certain what affects your opt-in rate the most. To this end, you should put the following to the test:

The text that will appear in your popup (your headline, any benefits and your call-to-action).
The interior design of your popup as a whole (e.g, images, font, color etc.).
What you’re selling — this should be dependent on what the viewer was just looking at, you can provide different kinds of lead magnets.
The popup’s appearance and location.

Even if your shiny, new popup appears to be performing well, tracking and testing is a smart idea because you could probably boost your response rate a whole lot more.

Check that you are able to track conversion data if you’re utilizing a separate piece of software to design your popups. I highly recommend Thrive Leads.

Split testing is the only surefire way to know how effective your email marketing campaign is, and how to optimize it further for even better results.

Conclusion

Popups, as you’ve just learned, can be extremely advantageous to your online business and well-received by your target demographic.

Here’s a quick rundown of how to make a successful popup:

Decide what you’ll offer inside the popup. Make sure the lead magnet is tailored to the information the visitor is seeing.
2.Write the popup’s copy.
Select the popup’s details, such as its timing and look.
Make a commitment to testing and tracking in order to increase response rates.

Remember to try to build popups that help rather than hinder your conversions!

Any type of marketing funnel relies on good sales copy and there are many pitfalls and mistakes that inexperienced copywriters can make. If you want to know more about avoiding these and other copywriting mistakes, take a look at the featured resource below where you can download a copy of a free report, Copywriting Blunders, so you will be forewarned and can make your copy more effective. Download, read it and take action 😊