Nikki McGonigal is a crafter and blogger who runs an Etsy shop called Nikki In Stitches. Nikki’s secondary goal on the website was to grow her email list. Nikki’s website had a sidebar box that invited people to sign up for her newsletter.
The box averaged a 0.4% conversion rate. Nikki decided to implement a type of pop-up called a LightBox on her website that would do the same thing, encouraging people to sign up for her newsletter.
The pop-up earned a 5.5% conversion rate!! That means the pop-up grew 1375% more than the sidebar box (basically Nikki reached thousands more people who signed up for her newsletter).
Darren Rowse is a professional photographer who runs a photography blog. Darren gained 40 new subscribers to his daily newsletter; he wasn't complaining about the number of subscribers, but was looking for ways to grow his email list.
Darren, an internet marketing enthusiast, decided to implement pop-ups list of timeshare owners on his website (using a rather simple design...). Using the pop-up, which gave visitors regular updates on his blog posts, Darren was able to increase his newsletter subscribers by 350 per day, an increase of 875% !
We find some essential elements that are relevant whenever a pop-up is successfully displayed and produces a high-quality conversion.
The main reason for their success is that most popups require the user's full attention at a given moment. The popup forces the user to close the popup or perform the action (such as subscribing to the newsletter, leaving a lead, making a purchase or other).
This is also why pop-ups can be perceived as annoying when the timing and message are not right. Likewise, pop-ups that do not require full attention, such as pop-ups at the top or in a sidebar, achieve similar success because they remain in the background without disturbing the visitor.
The facts speak for themselves; e-commerce website marketers invest a lot of resources to drive traffic to the site, but as soon as a visitor leaves the website, we lose the value of that visitor. Think of a hot air balloon that is continuously filled with hot air. If we leave holes in the balloon, we will see how the balloon slowly loses altitude.