Hey there, fellow marketer! 👋 Can I ask you a question?
Are you struggling to grow your email list? Spending hours creating lead magnets and setting up signup forms, but seeing an embarrassingly low number of new subscribers each week?
I feel your pain. Getting people to willingly hand over their email address isn‘t easy these days. With so much noise and competition online, it takes something truly remarkable to cut through the clutter and convince visitors to opt-in.
But here‘s the good news:
Drastically growing your email list doesn‘t require a huge advertising budget, fancy webinars, or months of hard work. With the right tool and tactics, you can convert way more of your existing website traffic into loyal subscribers.
In fact, using the methods I‘m about to share with you, we managed to grow our email list by over 600% in just a few short weeks – without spending a penny on ads.
Crazy, right? 🤯
And in this post, I‘m going to show you exactly how we did it, step-by-step. You‘ll learn:
- The #1 lead generation tool that makes capturing emails a breeze (even if you‘re not tech savvy)
- The "magic" popup formula that converts abandoning visitors into subscribers
- How to customize your optins for maximum engagement & conversions
- Advanced tips, tricks, and best practices to skyrocket your list growth
Ready to finally get the email list of your dreams & turbocharge your marketing? Let‘s dive in!
What is OptinMonster?
If you‘re not familiar with OptinMonster, here‘s the TL;DR:
It‘s the most powerful conversion optimization toolkit on the market, used by over 1.2 million websites to rapidly grow their email list, leads, and sales.
Think of it like a Swiss Army Knife for lead generation. It lets you easily create all types of high-converting optin campaigns like popups, floating bars, fullscreen welcome mats, slide-ins, and more – no coding required.
But what really makes OptinMonster stand out is its crazy-advanced targeting and personalization abilities.
Rather than showing the same generic campaign to everyone, OptinMonster lets you display the right offers and CTAs to the right people at the exact right time in their customer journey.
For example, you can trigger popups to appear:
- To visitors from specific referring sites
- After a visitor has viewed X pages or spent Y time on site
- When someone is about to leave your site (more on this later)
- To people who have already opted in to another offer
- Based on the visitor‘s physical location
- And tons more
The end result? Drastically higher conversion rates, email signups, and revenue – often 200-500%+ higher than standard popups and forms.
How We Increased Email Signups by 600%
OK, storytime. 📘
For years, we struggled to grow our email list on WPBeginner. Despite getting millions of visitors per month, only a small trickle actually subscribed.
We tried it all: sidebar forms, postscript CTAs, content upgrades, footer optins, slide-ins…no matter what we did, our list growth stayed stubbornly flat.
Maybe a few dozen signups per day, maximum. Hardly the "email empire" we dreamed of.
Sound familiar?
Then, we discovered OptinMonster. I‘ll be honest: at first, we were skeptical. We‘d used other list building tools before with mediocre results (I‘m looking at you, SumoMe 👀).
But we decided to give it a shot and created our first campaign: an exit-intent popup.
The Power of Exit-Intent
What‘s an exit-intent popup? Glad you asked!
Unlike those annoying popups that assault you the second you land on a website, exit popups only appear when a visitor is about to leave your site.
Using some very smart technology, OptinMonster can detect visitor behavior like mouse movements indicating they‘re about to bounce. At that precise moment, it serves up a targeted popup convincing them to subscribe before they go.
We used the simple "Yes/No" template, customized it to match our branding, and activated it on our highest-traffic posts and pages.
Here it is in action:
[Exit-intent popup GIF]The results? Mind-blowing. 🤯
- Before OptinMonster: ~80 subs/day
- After OptinMonster: 400-500+ subs/day
That‘s a 600% increase in email signups practically overnight, without any boost in traffic. Simply by converting more of our existing visitors into subscribers at the exact moment they were about to leave.
Crazy, right?
We went from barely scraping together 2.5K subscribers per month to well over 15K – without lifting a finger to "drive" more signups. OptinMonster did all the hard work for us.
Step-by-Step: Creating Your First OptinMonster Campaign
Alright, ready to achieve your own massive gains? Follow along and I‘ll show you how to get OptinMonster up and running on your site in 10 minutes flat.
Step 1: Create a free OptinMonster account & connect it to WordPress. You can grab a 14-day risk-free trial here.
Step 2: In your Dashboard, hit "Create New Campaign". Choose "Popup" as your campaign type.
Step 3: Pick a template. We‘re big fans of the "Yes/No" templates as they give visitors a non-popup option, which can boost conversions 20-30% vs. a typical optin. But feel free to pick any template you like!
Step 4: Customize your copy and design to match your brand and offer. Use the visual builder to change text, images, colors, and layout:
[OptinMonster builder screenshot]Step 5: Set your targeting rules. This is the key to getting sky-high conversions. We recommend starting with Exit-Intent, which you can enable in Display Rules:
[Exit-intent settings screenshot]OptinMonster lets you choose the sensitivity from Low (user quickly flicks mouse away) to High (user slightly moves away). We find Medium works best, but test what converts for your audience.
Step 6: Integrate your email provider. OptinMonster connects to over 30 ESPs including Mailchimp, Constant Contact, ActiveCampaign, and more. Just enter your API key and select the list. New leads will automatically be added.
Step 7: Hit Publish – and watch your email list grow faster than you ever thought possible!
Advanced Tips to Elevate Your Results
Of course, creating a simple exit-intent popup is just the tip of the OptiMonster iceberg. To take your list building to the next level, here are some of our favorite advanced tactics:
A/B Test Everything
One of the best ways to boost conversions is to split test different variations of your optins. OptinMonster makes this insanely easy – you can create as many variants as you like, and it will automatically funnel more visitors to the top performers.
Some key things to test:
- Headlines
- Body copy
- Calls-to-action
- Images
- Form fields
- Button colors
As the old saying goes, your results will improve 100% of the time you split test. 😉
Segment By Audience
The more you can personalize your campaigns to individual visitors, the higher your conversions will be. With OptinMonster‘s display rules, you can show completely unique offers based on factors like:
- Referring URL
- Device type
- Physical location
- New vs. returning visitors
- Customers vs. leads
- And much more
We use this to promote specific content upgrades, segment subscribers by interest, and avoid annoying people with irrelevant offers. The uplift is substantial.
Use an Urgent CTA
Nothing lights a fire under visitors quite like a deadline. Adding urgency and scarcity to your optin campaigns is one the easiest ways to multiply conversions.
One of my favorite OptinMonster features is the countdown timer. With a few clicks, you can add a dynamic timer that counts down to a specific date and time. When visitors see the clock ticking, they can‘t help but act now.
[Countdown timer screenshot]This works like gangbusters for launches, limited-time discounts, holiday promos, and more. We‘ve seen up to a 400% conversion bump by adding a timer.
Diversify Your Optin Types
Popups convert the best – it‘s just a fact. But, they can feel intrusive if overused. To engage visitors at all stages with less disruption, we recommend using a variety of OptinMonster campaign types, like:
- Floating bars
- Fullscreen welcome mats
- Sidebar forms
- Click-triggered popups
- Content lock optins
- Gamified "Spin to Win" wheels
Deploying 3-4 different optin types, targeted to specific content and visitor behavior, keeps things feeling fresh and maximizes conversions without fatiguing your audience.
Ready to Become an Email Sensation?
Phew, that was a lot! If you made it this far, you‘re well on your way to email list domination. 💪
As you can see, OptinMonster is hands-down the most powerful, intuitive, and just plain fun way to explode your subscriber growth. The only question is: what are you waiting for?
To put OptinMonster‘s magic to work on your website, click here to grab a 100% risk-free 14-day trial. Trust me, once you see the leads start rolling in, you‘ll wonder how you ever lived without it.
I‘m so excited for you to experience your own incredible gains like we did. Here‘s to your email success!
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