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Email marketing is dead, isn’t it?

Well, it’s actually far from that.

People still collect email addresses. They never stopped doing that.

If it wasn’t working they wouldn’t do that.

As it happens it’s still one of the most effective ways to market your product and make someone buy it.

According to this study 59% of B2B marketers claim it’s their number one way to generate revenue.

So, are you collecting mails?

If you do, it’s awesome. If you don’t you should start right now.

Either way I’m going to show you how you can do that, what makes people give you the address and what tools can you use to it effectively!

Enjoy the post!

How to Get an Email Address From a Stranger

When you should start collecting emails?

Right after you start your website!

It’s absolutely crucial to do it as soon as possible.

You might have a small following, only some random people visiting your blog but you still should try to get an email address from them.

They’re strangers now but as soon as you get that little bit of information about them your relationship will change.

What about an email campaign? I don’t have one yet.

There is no need to have it yet.

For now you just do it to get few names on the list. That’s it. You’ll reach them and pitch them later!

So, if I decided to start the collection right away what should I do? How to attract people to give me their addresses?

You create a lead magnet.

It can be anything. Anything you’ll want to give away for FREE. An ebook, a .pdf with some tips, a guide, an access to more content on your site.

Anything that can be valuable to someone who’s coming to check your site.

To send or make someone download the lead magnet there’s some technical stuff to be done.

I’m not going to talk about setting it from a mail automation provider’s perspective but I’ll show later in the post how to connect a WordPress subscription plugin to your provider’s account.

I’ll also recommend two providers if you’re not using one yet:

MailChimp – it’s completely FREE until you get to 2,000 subscribers.

ConvertKit – very simple to use, created for bloggers

So, now we know what we need to attract a visitor to make him give us his email address.

Let’s see how we can present our offer to him!

Email Subscription Form Types

We got our lead magnet and now we need to offer it to our visitors?

What’s the best way?

Well, it depends on many things. Each form works differently for different websites and different content.

You just got to test them all yourself and see what is the best for you.

What are the best and most well-known subscription form types?

Pop-ups

These are the forms that show up after the user has spent some time on your website or wants to leave it. We can set the time and decide what time would be the best for conversions.

We can either set them to go off when someone enters the page and starts reading your content or when he’s trying to exit it.

The latter is called an exit-intent pop-up and it’s pretty effective, too.

That’s how a pop-up looks like.

You can see that the background is slightly darkened.

This is to make a visitor focus on the form more and increase the conversions.

Embedded forms

These are the forms that are embeded within content.

It can be inside of a blog post, in the sidebar’s text or any other place.

They can be placed anywhere on your page.

To draw people’s attention it should be a different color than the content that surrounds it.

Let me show you an example:

As you can see there’s some content (it’s actually a part of a blog post) and at the end of it there’s an embeded form.

That’s pretty much how it looks like.

Fixed and Floating forms

The form looks similar in both of these types.

The difference is that fixed ones are only visible on a particular part of the screen and if you scroll away they dissappear.

The floating form on the other hand follows you wherever you scroll.

They can be located in top bar, the footer on in the sidebar. We set the place where they appear.

That’s how they usually look:

This one is right on the top of the page.

So, now you know what types of forms are there, how they look and how they work.

Let me show you what plugin do you need to create one and start collecting emails now!

ConvertPlus Interface, Features and Setup

ConvertPlus is an advanced lead generation tool but on the other hand it’s pretty easy to use.

Anyone can learn it quickly and I’ll show you that.

It offers three different kind of forms you can use: a Modal Pop-up, an Info Bar and a Slide-In.

Let’s go into the details.

The ConvertPlus icon will show up in the dashboard shortly after the installation. The features look like this:

This is the dashboard:

The Modules section is there to choose which forms we want to create and display. The Knowledge Base is a place where you can get some info on different issues regarding Convert Plus.

But before we create any form we should first integrate it with our email provider.

To do that we need to go to the Resources and choose Addons.

We’ll see a list of availabe extensions. We should look for the one we’re using and install it.

Done that?

The next step is to create a campaign.

To do that we need to choose Connects from the plugin menu and choose Create a Campaign in the Connects main page.

The next thing on the list is naming the Campaign and choosing the third party software we want to connect with.

If we did that we’ll be asked to provide the authorization code from the third party software that runs our mailing list. Just put it in the field below.

If that ends succesfully we’ll be asked to choose a list to save emails collected by this opt-in (if you don’t have it yet log into your email provider account and create one).

If you selected the list the campaign will be created and added to the dashboard.

You can export its contacts, check the analytics or delete it if you like.

Fine, now you know how to connect your mailing provider.

Now, let’s try to create a form using Convert Plus. We’ll do it step-by-step.

How to Make a Email Subscription Pop-Up Using Convert Plus

There are at least few steps when creating an opt-in form.

Firstly, we have to choose one of the available:

• Modal Popup
• Info bar
• Slide in

There are pre-made templates for each type. We just have to pick one and modify the design and settings for our own purpose.

Because I believe that pop ups have the best conversion rates we’ll use it as an example.

So, let’s begin with choosing a template we’ll work with.

Click Modal Popup in the menu and then Create New Modal.

We’ll see a bunch of templates. Most of them are quite universal but we’ll choose the one below.

Hover on it and you’ll be able to see a Live Preview. When you choose Use This you’ll be directed to a menu where you can modify the template.

So, let’s choose the latter option and start modyfying it.

Firstly, to change the font, options, colors and many other things just click on the field you want to edit and use the menu above the template.

On the left side of the window we can see the main menu that consists of some submenus.

These are:

• Design
• Behaviour
• Submission

We’ll go through each of them right now!

Let’s start with the Design menu. This one is obviously used for editing the name, the background, the images and the animation of the form.

Btw., to check how the form looks on mobile devices click the icon in the bottom.

What Can You Edit in The Design Menu

• Name – you can edit the name of your design
• Background – you can edit the background, set the background type (color, gradient or an image), upload your own image and change its position
• Form Designer – in this menu you can change the layout (add new fields or change the grid structure of the form), align the text of the form, add shadows, change the position and the styling of the buttons
• Modal Image – inside this menu you can edit the image, you can upload your own, resize it, change its position and hide it (for mobile devices). If you’d like to create a 3D ebook cover image (just like the one on the screenshot) just go here and make one.
• Close Link – this one is about how can you close the form. You choose whether it’s an “X” image, a text or anything else. You can select that it can be closed by clicking on the background, what place the link should be placed at or whether it should close after a particular time
• Modal Animation – you set how should the form show up and disappear. You set the animations. You can flip it, rotate it, make it bounce or turn it off completely. Up to you.
• Advance Design Options – you can change the size, edit the borders, the shadow or add an affiliate link to the form

This is what you can do in the design menu. There’s really a lot of details and it may take you some time to learn them all.

Let’s check the next menu now.

What Can You Edit in The Behavior Menu?

• Smart Launch – this is the place where you set when and where will the form show up. You can either make it show up the when user wants to exit the page or after he scrolls. You can use the time as a trigger and instead of making it pop up you can display it inline in a post or in a page.
• Manual Display – as the name suggests these are the settings that you edit if you want the form to be displayed by some kind of action
• Repeat Control – you can enable or disable cookies and choose for how long the pop up won’t be shown to a person who already joined the list or to the one who closed it after the first time he’s seen it
• Target Pages – we can set on what pages will the form show up and on what it won’t
• Target Visitors – we choose what visitors should the form target and what visitors shouldn’t see it at all
• Modal Status – this is very important, you have to set it to “LIVE” to make it work on your site

Now we know what options can we use when it comes to the behavior of the form. You’ll see that it’s pretty advanced and you can really create a lot of variations.

The last one is the Submission Menu.

What Can You Edit in The Submission Menu?

This is the last menu. You can choose the campaign that this form will collect the emails for.

You can create the messages that will be displayed after a succesful submission (or a redirect after a submission) or a failed one.

That’s pretty much it when it comes to this menu.

If you set up everything the way you wanted then you’re almost good to go.

There are two simple things left to do.

The first one is obviously saving your work here.

Next we need to go to the WordPress dashboard and choose the type of form we just created from the Convert Plus menu.

You’ll be forwarded to a Designer Menu. You’ll only have to change the status of the form you just created to “Live”.

If you’ve done that then the pop up should start working.

Well, done you just created a popup using Convert Plus!

Where Can You Get Convert Plus

I’ve used a few Email Subscription plugins on my WordPress site but Convert Plus is the best I’ve used so far.

It’s really flexible with a lot of pre-made templates.

Some of them are 100% ready to go.

The number of features and options to choose from is enormous.

You can make a Pop-up, a Slide In or an Info Bar. You can create anything you want and make it behave anyway you want.

You’ll see the stats how your forms perform and you’ll be able to make your little tweaks accordingly.

To sum it up I highly recommend Convert Plus for any WordPress website.

To get it go here and create your own high converting email subscription forms right now!

P.S. You run a blog and you want to improve everyday? Make sure you check one of my latest posts:

What to Do Every Day if You Want to Become a Better Blogger

Thanks for reading!

The post What is The Best WordPress Email Subscription Plugin and How To Use It appeared first on Grow Yourself Online.