Do you wonder why you don’t have engaged readers on your blog? Do people come and then leave your website, without letting you know if they would return?
If your web analytics software is showing that you’re attracting more new visitors than returning ones, you might recognize that you have to work harder on engaging with your audience, rather than trying to get more traffic.
Let’s take a look at those two types of visitors. You attract new visitors to your website by using social media tactics and guest posting. “Word of Mouth” is certainly the best traffic generation source that you could desire.
On the other hand, returning visitors usually need a strong reason to come to your website again. Either your blog has already become popular or you have invested efforts into creating a community, the problem of engaging visitors has been solved, and all you have to do now is to continue the good work. In the other case, if you’re struggling with making people returning to your website, you should consider starting to build a healthy list of subscribers.
In a previous article, I have mentioned the importance of email marketing. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the industry’s stats, but there are almost two times as many active email accounts in the world as Facebook and Twitter combined.
In 2013, there were 1.23 billion Facebook active accounts and 232 million active Twitter accounts.
According to the Radicati Group There were 3.6 billion email accounts in 2013. By 2016, the number will reach 4.3 billion.
2 tips for capturing email addresses
There are two ways to convince people to leave their email address to receive updates from your blog.
1. Subscribing box at the end of each post
The subscribing box is an “organic” method to collect email addresses. People who are digging what they have just read will naturally enter their email address. Usually, this happens when the content they have consumed offers solutions to one of their struggles.
Let people know that they can receive similar content in their inbox by using the box at the end of each post. Although it is considered a best practice, the subscribing box will only help you to collect email addresses from people who have already been convinced by your previous efforts to subscribe. If you want to differentiate from the other bloggers that write for the same audience as you do, you might consider the second alternative to collect email addresses.
2. Exit opt-in pop ups
Unlike the subscribing box, the exit opt-in pop up allows you to become persuasive. Here are the major benefits of using pop ups to encourage people to subscribe.
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The surprise effect: people don’t expect to receive anything when they are about to leave
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You can use incentives to encourage people to subscribe: free ebooks, guides or checklists
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You become a provider of valuable information for your blog’s readers
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You’re more likely to get email addresses if you tell people what to do by using smart copywriting in strategic moments
The great thing about pop ups is that you can test different versions.
The first version, let’s call it A, doesn’t offer anything to subscribers, but it emphasizes on the benefits of subscribing and it includes a “Call To Action”.
The second version, B, will include the incentive – a free ebook, checklist, case study, event invitation. Besides the elements of version A, pop ups that include an incentive are more likely to increase the number of subscribers as long as the experiment is running on your website.
Though, you should know that once you have started such an attempt, you must continue delivering relevant content to subscribers according to what they have downloaded. Targeting and email marketing plays a vital role in building a healthy list.
Making people return and engage with your website’s content and offers involve using pop ups the smart way.
I’m going to give a few examples of exit plugins and tools that can help you with capturing email addresses. Though, you should know that it’s not about the tool, but about your goals and how are you going to achieve them. Before jumping in any action of building your list, take time to create a strategy and then stick to it.
Tools to grow your email list
Here are a range of tools to grow your email list including paid and free. Some have a lot of features and flexibility others just do a few things. Let’s check them out.
Paid tools
1. Marketizator
Marketizator is a more comprehensive tool that allows you to do the following features and much more.
- Trigger pop ups at exit, on scroll or on load
- You can test different versions of pop ups with A/B testing
- It also provides with stats, reporting and statistical significance recommendation for the A/B test.
The basic licence retails at $ 19 per month and it includes having unlimited A/B tests either on the site’s content or pop ups, a number of surveys (with ready to use templates) to analyze the website’s audience, advanced segmentation and targeting rules and scheduling options.
You can use all of these features on one site.
2. Pop Up Domination
It’s a newsletter solution that allows you to use multiple layouts and color schemes. It also includes targeting rules and the option to A/B test your pop ups. It comes with statistics and reports. The basic licence retails at $ 47 per year, and it allows you to use on one site only.
Free Plugins
1. Dreamgrow Scroll Triggered Box
It allows you to prompt pop up on certain events such as percentage scroll, reaching the end of the post or the end of the comments. You have the option to use “Call to Action” buttons and emphasize on the benefits of subscribing. As you see, this plugin doesn’t use as a trigger the exit intent and it isn’t so useful if you have a freebie to offer.
2. Icegram WordPress plugin
It’s more versatile and it allows you to use targeting rules and to customize the pop up’s design. You can use Icegram if you want to give people access to one of your ebooks and to grab their email address. Be warned though: you have to build a landing page to capture the email addresses.
Regardless what tool you choose to capture the visitor’s attention, always make sure that you monitor your results. Also, remember that it’s not about the content you write, but how you market it to people.
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