5 Ways To Make An Impact With Email Pop-Ups

Opening a website only to have a pop-up box greet you is one of the most annoying online experiences.

No one likes having to navigate through email sign up pop-ups to get to the information they really want, and if they get fed up with a website’s pop-ups, they’ll likely just leave.

But there are ways to skillfully insert pop-ups into your website that aren’t annoying and intrusive and that actually get positive results. Here are 5 tips to make a personal impact:

Don’t greet everyone with the same message

You use an email service to segment and target your emails to different groups, and you should be doing the same for your pop-ups. If someone has visited your site multiples times only to be greeted by the same message each time, it can get annoying.

New visitors should receive one message, and return visitors another. No matter what message you’re greeting them with, use a resource like State of Writing to check on the proper spelling, grammar and other writing components. Keep your messages direct and to the point by curtailing your word count.

Divide your visitors into new and returning

Your welcome pop-ups should be directed towards either new visitors who haven’t yet signed up for your newsletter or email list, and those return visitors who already have. Asking someone repeatedly to sign up for something they’ve already done is frustrating.

Instead, use the pop-up as an opportunity to ask them to share your information with others or invite a friend to subscribe. Returning visitors may even benefit from additional information and resources.

Use the right tone

Don’t be smug in your email pop ups. If someone is not interested in signing up for a newsletter or getting more information, they shouldn’t be met with a snarky attitude.

Pop-ups that have opt-out buttons such as, “No, I don’t like saving money,” or “No, I don’t want to wear fashionable shoes” do nothing but put down the visitor for trying to opt-out of getting additional information. A simple, “Yes, sign me up!” Or “No thanks, I’m not interested” will do just fine. Insulting people as they enter your website is no way to win over loyal customers.

Maybe they’re interested in your products, but aren’t ready to commit yet. Greeting them with such a tone sets a bad impression from the start and can leave a bad taste in their mouth which may turn them off of you from the get-go.

Further segment your visitors based on the number of visits

Don’t just look at who’s new and who’s a return visitor. Delve deeper into your data and see how many times those return visitors have stopped in. Also look at which pages those visitors have been to – perhaps there are areas of your website they’ve never seen before that you can suggest to them. Someone who has looked at a particular product multiple times may be persuaded to make a purchase if they’re met with a pop-up offering a special promotion. Just like you send out targeted emails to various groups of your list, based on different information, you should be greeting visitors with different messages based on the information you have about their habits.

Give them some time before popping-up on them

Pop-ups that appear even before a website has finished fully loading are off-putting. They want to be able to see some of the information on your site before they are propositioned for an email subscription. Allow them some time to read a little bit on your landing page before you trigger your pop-up to appear.

Implementing these slight changes in your pop-ups can have a tremendous impact on how they are received by your viewers and their effectiveness. How do you use email pop ups?

Gloria Kopp is a journalist and a content manager at Big Assignments. She enjoys sharing her writing advice in her posts at HuffPost and Australian Help blog. Gloria is also a paper reviewer at UK Writings, where she contributes her reviews for students and educators.