Popups, love them or hate them, they are a touchy subject!
If used incorrectly or are poorly optimized, they can be intrusive, annoying, and potentially bad for business. However, used correctly exit intent pop ups can be extremely effective at boosting your email marketing list. But contrary to popular belief, good popups do exist.
What is an Exit Intent Popup?
Exit intent popups are widely used as a way to target visitors while they’re about to leave a website. Whenever a user is about to abandon a website, they are targeted with a message in the form of a pop-up that allows you to reach them one more time before they leave, often offering an incentive to stay, such as a discount code or a promise of regular updates, or a time limited special offer.
In this article, we share best practices for exit-intent popups, but first, lets discuss why it’s important to ‘Grow your database’
We’ve heard some clients recently asking if email marketing is now obsolete, the simple answer is no, email marketing is now more effective than ever.
Why? Well, social media is choosy, different platforms appeal to different age ranges, genders, and definitely what type of business you are. Are you using the right platform, are you speaking in right tone of voice for that platform, are you engaging enough? Social media is time consuming can be exhausting. The big players can also alter algorithms often without warning, and in an instant, significantly affect how you can or cannot communicate with your customers.
Blogs however, are great way to keep your website updated and to post on social media but the best way to utilise these is then to collate them into one email with links to those blogs, and bring them back to your website. In fact, most people reading this likely clicked on the link from our own InSynch newsletter – so we know it works!
You then have the opportunities to remarket to engaged audiences, segmented lists, set up drip feed marketing, the list goes on…
But you need to first have that audience and to ‘Grow your database’ and as a business this is not something you should avoid or ignore, as your email list provides you with a direct link to your audience!
You can do this with these simple exit intent popup hacks.
Be clear about what you’re offering
People don’t provide their personal information for no reason. It’s crucial to be really clear about what advantages your subscribers will gain. There needs to be a clear incentive as to why they allow you to contact them again.
Remember the “2/48/50 rule,” which means:
- Only 2% of visitors will buy something.
- 48% are not ready to shop immediately.
- 50% will never become a customer.
Exit Popups can be used for one or more of the following reasons:
- Promotion — If you have a timely or personalized offer that the visitors are unaware of, Exit Popups can help you share it with the visitor.
- Collect information — You can collect feedback or a survey from your visitors to uncover real insights into your products, services, etc.
- Build an Email List — You can invite them to subscribe to your email newsletters.
- Send Them Information — Once you have their email, you can share additional information with your list, such as company news, new content, announcements, etc.
Don’t ask for too much
A common mistake when implementing a pop up is to ask for too much information. You don’t need to know someone’s name, address, email address and phone number in order for them to subscribe. Users will more than likely leave when asked for too much information as it’s time consuming and the majority of it, irrelevant. Ask for the minimum that you need, in order to showcase your products and services to them in the future.
Page specific popups
We have found these work very well for some of our Total Digital Marketing clients with a number of different products or services to offer. You can use separate popups to trigger on alternative pages in order to ensure they are directly relevant to the content that the user has been viewing before they go to leave the site. This ensures that you are offering your potential subscriber a pertinent incentive, more likely to generate interest.
Don’t lose an opportunity
Numerous studies have shown more than 98% of visitors leave websites without ever converting. That’s a massive loss of opportunity? Don’t miss the opportunity to capture those who have engaged with your content and bring them back later. Just because people aren’t ready to purchase from you right now, doesn’t mean they won’t in the future. Successful email marketing often has a great conversion rate, so it’s always an advantage to build a considerable list of subscribers to convert in the future.
Display a Secondary Offer
Shopping cart abandonment is a common problem on e-commerce shopping sites. 7 out of 10 visitors will leave the checkout page and your store without buying anything. This could be for a number of reasons such as a poorly optimised page, unclear payment methods and shipping options, slow page speed or poor mobile experience to name but a few.
By using a secondary offer in your Exit Intent Popups on this page, ie displaying a message or offer that is different from the visitor’s original intention, will make the browser pause and consider the offer. They may of course still choose to leave at this point, but its an opportunity to convert all the same, even if it’s just for an email subscriber.
Exclude Your Existing Subscribers
Someone has already subscribed, should you be showing them a Popup again? Absolutely not! It’s an easy mistake to make and one which can greatly irritate and annoy returning visitors.
If you have the option available, customise each exit intent popup and customise which type of visitor can see the popup. This way you are excluding all your current email subscribers.
Add a Countdown Timer
Using countdown timers in your Exit Popups will add that sense of urgency and encourage them to check out the offer, and possibly purchase.
Create Scarcity
A widely-used and effective sales strategy. Black Friday is a case in point. How many of us rush to grab that bargain available only on that one day? By selling exclusive content in a limited quantity only for a limited time could and does create customer loyalty and in some cases frenzy. There is something about limited supplies that makes consumers want to purchase, a time old tactic used by many a marketer for many years. You can also display how many people are viewing the item, another way to increase scarcity.
Suggest Related Content
Guide visitors to another piece of content that is directly related to the content they have just consumed. On the exit intent success page include another link to relevant content and guide them to another page within your website.
WAIT…
Think about the words you use in your Exit Intent Popup. These will have a significant effect on how well your Popup performs.
Attention-grabbing headlines such as “Limited,” “Free,” “Special,” etc., work really well, to make the visitor pause and consider the offer.
Obvious I know, but another word that will make a shopper pause is “Wait”. Try it and see how it performs.
So, in conclusion Exit Intent Popups if used correctly can not only be a powerful tool in helping you Grow your Database’ but make those all important conversions.
Contact us for more information on popups or our Total Digital Marketing Packages.