Tip: The most effortless way of growing your email list
After launching Scrapbook only 3 weeks ago, my newsletter list is at 231 subscribers. And I don't even have an email form embedded on my website.
I did just one thing to grow my list - I set up an exit-intent popup. It took me 30 minutes.
For those of you who are not familiar with it - it's the kind of a popup that appears when you are about to leave a website. Many people say they're annoying. But they just work.
Here's how my popup looks like:
Yes, it's just a single sentence on a plain background. But it converts at an astounding 10.5% (industry average is 3-5%).
Why does it work so well?
- the offer is tightly related to my product (a growth tactics database)
- a simple and clear value proposition
- I'm only asking for an email
What can you offer to make it work on your website? Just a couple of relatively low-effort examples:
- checklist
- cheatsheet
- swipe file
- email course
- industry report/stats
- quiz
Are you using popups on your website? What's your experience?
I've always avoided this on Indie Hackers, because there's a very vocal minority among developers and such that absolutely haaaattteess popups of any kind. But maybe one day. If I did, my focus would be on making them as unobtrusive as possible.
In general, I'm not of fan of popups too. But this is because most companies do them wrong. The worst example being when you visit a website for the first time and you're shown a popup asking you so sign up to their newsletter before you even know what that company's product is 😁
So yeah, 100% agreed that popups have to be as unobtrusive as possible - that's why I only use them on exit-intent.
Btw does the IH team edit post titles?
But if we hate these pop-ups (and I certainly do), why do they work?
Is it because:
If the reason is #1, then maybe we should grin and bear them. But if it's #2, maybe we should be worried about annoying the 90% of the audience who wasn't interested in order to achieve the 10% success rate.
I suppose either way, it'll all depend on your audience and your goals
Just a thought that you're comparing your only signup, a popup, to other sites which convert their popup way less but have many many more ways to sign up.
Yup, you're right. That doesn't change the fact that this one element performs better for me than most other sites ;)
Geniusly simple! Like everything effective — so evident! But we dont wan`t to see simple and effective solutions. We want to dive into endless product improvements, designing and coding, to finally realise — nobody actually neads your product.
PRO tip @kacper . MetaSurvey will devinitely use that! Link on the product?
I'm using optimonk.com and I like it so far but there's a lot of other tools like this.
@kacper I am assuming that you are using a WP plugin for this one? Mind sharing which one is it.
I'm using Optimonk and Privy (don't recommend Privy though). But there's a ton of different popup tools. My website's built with Carrd, not WP ;)
thanks Kacper for sharing this!
Popups still work :)