Pop-ups often have a bad rep. Widely perceived as irritating or frustrating to potential customers, some brands shied away from using them altogether. However, this can be a mistake. Pop-ups have huge potential for every form of call to action.

When planning your email marketing strategy, one of the first steps is to capture email addresses. Pop-ups can be an effective tool. Let’s look at best ways to build your email list through pop-ups.

1) Be Strategic about Timing

Okay, pop-ups can be annoying. Nobody likes to be interrupted just as they get to the meat of an article. The timing your pop-ups is essential to each’s success as a list-building tool.

Pop-ups are intrusive, but that makes them so effective. They can’t be ignored. What’s the best timing for your pop-ups? It depends on how users interact with your site. Testing is essential. Pop-ups can be linked to scrolling. This ensures users interact with the page.

2) Think Of The Audience First

Your audience’s experience is one of the number one things to consider with any form of CTA. Building an email list is no difference. If you intrude in the customer experience with a pop-up, offer something in return.

For example, the Little Family Adventure blog doesn’t just make a grab for your email. The pop-up welcomes you to the site and offers a free ebook with real value. By offering your audience something of value, you demonstrate you consider them worth something.

3) Keep It Clean

A messy design that doesn’t draw the eye is a guaranteed loser. If your audience doesn’t understand immediately what your call-to-action requires of them, they’ll click away in seconds.

Because a pop-up interrupts a users activity, the experience needs to be as seamless as possible. Yes, you offer something in return. But your users want to to get back to what they were doing. With clean design that directs them to an email input immediately, you’ll maximize your returns.

 4) Don’t Ask Much 

In accordance with the principles of keeping it simple, avoid asking for too much information. An increasingly time-consuming form will lead to a lot of incompletes. Your CTA needs to inspire people to undertake the action, but if this process frustrates them they’ll quickly give up. Think carefully about what information you need.

Urban Outfitters, always an exemplary example of keeping it cool, does this perfectly. They have a simple pop-up encouraging visitors to subscribe. A clean square appears on the screen with a box for your email address. Nothing more. Urban Outfitters know if they snag your email, the rest can follow later.

5) Have an Exit Strategy

The vast majority of people who leave your website aren’t coming back. With so much content out there, people move on fast. As people begin to click away, it’s your last chance to reach them. Consider a unique class of pop-ups triggered when your website users display exit intent. That way, you can convert a number of these people into emails for your list before they go.

Beauty website Lush employs this strategy to capture user emails as people are about to leave. With an unmissable pop-up across the screen triggered by exit behavior, Lush catches those before they depart.

6) Don’t Stop Once You Pop

Pop-ups are a fantastic tool to gather details and data about your viewers. They also help grow your email list. Don’t let the journey stop for your viewers after they engage with your pop-ups. If somebody takes time out of their experience to provide an email address, reach out.

A welcome email, with a note of thanks, is a great way to begin to build a relationship with your audience. Say thanks! Pay attention to email marketing metrics to gage how to adjust your strategy.

Wrapping Up

Evidence shows pop-ups have real power to build your email lists. If you cover your website with pop-ups, you audience will be overwhelmed. However, carefully curated and targeted pop-ups can take your email list to the next level. 

Author Bio: Katherine Rundell is a pop-ups writer at Essay writing services reviews and Academized review. She is also a manager at Top essay writing services.