Oh a glorious day it was in 1996 when Mark Zuckerman invented the “Website popup” while working at Tripod.com. Who knew the company's request for a new and innovative way to showcase ads and collect leads would turn into a widespread marketing practice?

Mark knew, and boy was he right.

This simple invention has gone on to drive billions in sales, help acquire massive customer databases with billions of leads, and been even more consistent and affordable in driving sales than social media marketing and ads.

And this is not to say that those methods are inferior or that they do not work, because THEY DO! However, you need email marketing to succeed at both of them and that starts with capturing leads. This means that regardless of how you market and drive website traffic, you need a lead capture strategy.

And this is what we’re going to review today, so continue reading if you’re ready to grow your email list & drive sales.

Everything we’re reviewing today:

1. What does “lead capture” mean? 
2. What is a “website Popup”?
3. Why do you need a website pop up?
4. How can you create an optimized website popup?
5. Website Popup Checklist

What does “Lead capture” mean?

“Lead capture” refers to two things: the people visiting your website and the process of collecting their contact information to stay in touch. 

Lead = a potential buyer browsing your products.

Capture = the form necessary to “collect” their contact information in real time.

So setting up a lead capture could like like several things, here’s 10 examples:

1. A “popup” that offers a discount

2. A quiz to match them with products

3. A side bar optional popup

4. A “spin the wheel” game

5. An embedded newsletter signup in the footer

6. The embedded blog sign up on your blog page

7. A freebie form to fill out

8. A Landing page with a form

9. Asking people to sign up for SMS marketing

10. A Push notification left corner popup on desktop

And there are more examples where this comes from, you can get super creative with lead capture. The important thing is to have a strategy for how you do lead capture and what you plan to do with the leads after you capture them.

I answer both of these questions in the “Email Marketing Tool Kit”, download it and then open your email to begin a new learning experience.

In the meantime, Let’s go over #1 in my list of the types of lead capture, which is website popups.

What is a website popup?

A pop up is a form that appears on your website, asking your visitors to become official members of your audience by giving you their email address.This foundational step builds a clear path towards spending money with you by agreeing to opt into your sales funnel. 

One of the easiest ways to make your website popup enticing, is to offer something 100% free with no catch or credit card required. What you offer needs to be relevant to your audience, something you know how to do, and it costs you nothing to share this valuable information. Additionally, it should be something that helps you establish Authority with the audience you're trying to build.

Your website popups don’t have to offer discounts to be great at capturing leads, lets go over a few examples together.

4 Examples of high converting website popups

3 things that make this website popup great: 

1. It’s calling out the users behavior in real time, making them feel compelled to stop and pay attention.
2. It makes them feel like “Oh I am doing that and so are my customers. How can I change it?”
3. It’s colorful, fun, uses the brands mascot and strategically places numbers that are enticing to the viewer.

3 things that make this website popup great: 

1. Who doesn’t love to win free stuff? This pop up is clean, straight to the point, and clarifies the frequency of free-undie giveaways for email news subscribers only.
2. It only pops up on underwear product pages, which also helps the company track which subscribers are interested in what (something vital for successful email marketing)
3. It sets a clear expectation for what else I get after signing up, which allows the user to sign up with confidence and not be caught off guard by any additional content.

 

4 things that make this website popup great: 

1. This popup immediately appeals to people who prefer to read and those who prefer to watch visuals while cooking. This immediately eliminates friction for reasons they can’t sign up.
2. The decline button reiterates that by turning down this offer, they don’t want the free delicious recipes offered by the visuals on the popup.
3. This popup uses strong visually striking images that catch attention and stimulate ones appetite. 
4. The promise is clear, relevant, and up to date by emphasizing it’s “this season’s” content for FREE

 

3 things that make this website popup great: 

1. This pop up offers visitors a free chance to learn more about themselves through the quiz, while also promising customized solutions based on the results
2. Immediately peaks the interest of people interested in buying but aren’t sure of what to buy.
3. Likely requires visitors to submit email in order to receive results, which also helps in distinguishing subscribers different interests/needs (vital for successful email marketing)

The key takeaway here is that you don’t need to heavily discount your products to grow your email list. It doesn’t have to eat into your profits for it to be effective and enticing to your potential customers.

But why is this valuable for you? Let’s go over a few benefits of having a website popup and why you always need one.

Why do you need a website popup?

Pop ups on your website help you do or prepare for 4 things:

1. retain visitors

2. Retarget visitors

3. Build a relationship with your target audience

4. Convert visitors into customer

Retain visitors

Most people who visit your website for the first time, don’t plan to buy anything. They are beginning their journey of doing research about your brand and your competitors. Because of this, they haven’t committed to your brand nor have they expressed explicit interest in shopping with you yet.

You can change this and help them transition into the next step of your sales funnel with email or sms marketing. However, you need to use a website popup with appropriate triggers for the best results. 

Retarget Visitors

Capturing leads who consent to be marketed to by your company means that you can take this data and retarget them with ads. This can easily be done for Facebook, Pinterest, and TikTok ads. Running ads this way ensures your ads are being shown to people you know for a fact are at least interested in your brand. 

This saves you money on ad spend, reduces random clicks that waste your budget and keeps people in touch with your brand across multiple platforms. Which is crucial to your long term success because on average, people need to be in contact with you at least 7 different ways before they feel comfortable buying.

And, for many it is realistic to create as content as possible. Because sure, you can make youtube videos, tiktok videos, Tweet, reels, post on facebook, Pin on Pinterest, blog, have a podcast etc. and that could drive sales. But, it will also drive you to be exhausted, overworked and frustrated with your inability to keep up with this content demand while fulfilling orders or services.

Just imagine, you’re missing out on being able to do this and make your ads run better solely because you don’t have a popup on your website.

Build a relationship

By collecting people’s contact information, you already know so much about them. You should know what products they’re interested in, what channel they visited your website from, and how they prefer to be sold to.

Setting up an email popup tells you all of this information and more, which allows you to create a personalized content experience. For example, if a lead came from TikTok, you know they love video content.

If the lead came from your blog, then you know that they enjoy reading everything you have to share. And if the lead came up from an exit intent popup on your product pages, then you know what they’re interested in buying.

With this information, you’ll create email content that builds the trust between you, establishes authority and helps them learn more about your brand. Without doing email marketing, you won’t find another cost effective or easy method for connecting with potential customers.

Convert viewers to customers

Fun fact: 92% of people will not buy from your website on their first visit. So if you don’t have a way to capture their contact information, you will never convert the majority of your website visitors.

If you’re okay with never converting 92% of your website visitors, then congratulations - you put your money in a dumpster and set it on fire to prove a point nobody asked for.

Now that you know the top 4 reasons you need a website popup, I want you to understand what a website popup can help you accomplish.

What does a website popup accomplish?

A pop up gives you access to your audience’s eyes everyday, because most people check their emails at least once a day. This increases your chance of converting them, and making them members of your community.

By not having a website popup, you are missing a major opportunity to make money. Additionally, you are failing to build a more intimate and exclusive community around free subscriber only content. If billion dollar corporations use website popups: Savage X Fenty, The Washington Post, Medium, Ahrefs, Neil Patel, Apply and more - WHY AREN’T YOU?

When you’re ready to make a change and implement a website popup that drives sales on multiple fronts, Download this free guide I made you:

Website Pop Up CheckList