Once you have discovered the importance of collecting emails and have an actionable plan of what to do with them, you will need the right set of tools to accumulate a significant number of email leads to send out promotions for your business or even share links.
Regardless of how little your business may be, one of your primary goals would be to gather those email addresses. This may not be very easy at first, but after a while, the results you get from re-using those precious emails can change the scope of your online business.
At first, the big issue that scares the sh*t out of marketers is: growing the list. Why? Because of the hassles and work that comes along with it. This was the general issue in the past, and there was a lot of software that really frustrated marketers because they had access to limited features and data required to push the growth of their email list.
Some people even settled for Facebook marketing, and over the years, it has been proven that such an approach is not quite viable in the long term. The money is in the list and that is not changing anytime soon.
So what kind of workstation do I need to get started, growing a successful email list? If this is the kind of question you have been pondering on, it means that you haven’t heard about MailOptin yet. Mailoptin is a solid WordPress plugin for collecting email addresses by displaying pretty and conversion optimized optin forms in your website. It takes list building to another level with its built-in A/B testing engine and accurate reporting analytics.
There are so many email subscription plugins on the market, but what makes MailOptin stand out from the rest? What does the plugin have to offer and is it worth your money?
Features of MailOptin
Here are some of the exciting features of MailOptin for your reading pleasure.
Different Optin Form Designs
MailOptin contains a wide range of form types, and each of these optin form types has different built-in stylish themes that can be customized from start to finish.
There are five optin form types in the plugin and they include:
- Lightbox: Design popup forms with various stylish templates.
- In-Post Opt-in: Display optin forms at the top or bottom of your post.
- Notification Bar: Optins can also be displayed on a notification bar.
- Slide-in: This optin form appears at the bottom corner of your site.
- Sidebar/Widget: Sidebar optin forms that can be easily activated from the widgetized area of your WordPress.
Customization to Your Heart Content
With absolutely no limitation, you can create professional opt-in forms and place them anywhere on your site. Every element of your form can be customized via the plugin’s live editor. You won’t have to reload your entire website to see your changes; every change you make is visible in the live editor. You can change the opt-in form message, the image, image orientations, effect, borders, colours and even remove the plugin’s branding.
In as much as there are optin form types that automatically displays in certain areas of your website, you can also choose to display certain optin form types in any area of your website. You can do this using the embed feature.
Advanced Targeting
The targeting options available really shows the power of the plugin, if you use them smartly, you can dramatically maximize conversions and even create a segmented email list to quickly reach out to a target audience.
Basically, you can trigger opt-in forms on specific areas of your site; this could be blog posts, pages, categories, tags and so on. Since it’s possible to display optins in certain areas, it is also possible to prevent optins from being triggered on any part of your website.
A/B Testing Engine
MailOptin allows you to carry out split testing on your campaigns. This way, you are able to create variations of your optin form in order to determine the best-performing ones. This is very crucial and highly beneficial for creating conversion-focused optin forms.
Beside its split testing feature, you can also have access to performance statistics of your optin forms using its built-in analytics. You can track things like number of impression and conversion rate.
Creating Your First Optin Form
Like I have earlier stressed, creating an optin form is very easy in MailOptin and I am going to walk through the steps in setting up a popup.
Once you have installed and activated the plugin, navigate to Optin Campaign > Add New > Campaign Title > Elegance Theme. The default optin from type is “Lightbox”, otherwise you can select any other optin form type just before selecting a theme.
Once you select a theme, it will take you to the live editor where you can customize your optin form and set the trigger options which we are going to also talk about.
Display Trigger Settings
Now that you are done with your customization, it’s time to set up your triggers. There are a lot of trigger options that you can select from to determine how best you want your optin forms to be displayed.
For the Lightbox optin form, here are some of them:
- Specified time delay
- At a specific point in the content
- After scrolling down a fixed percentage of the page
- Scheduled triggers
- AdBlock detected
- Referrer detection targeting
- On exit intent: this is when a visitor is about to leave your website.
For me, one of the unique trigger options that can dramatically increase conversions happens when you turn on Exit Intent – This feature triggers your popup form whenever a visitor attempts to exit your website or close the tab.
From research, it’s been proven that less intrusive popups help in increasing conversion by 70%. It’s a win-win situation because you will be having a user-friendly focused website and a less intrusive Lightbox opt-in form.
Easy Integration
The plugin nicely integrates with most of the popular email marketing services. Just on the integration settings, you will be shown the best way to easily connect the plugin to your responder. Usually, it’s with an API connection.
Here are some of the providers you can integrate with: MailChimp, Sendy, Constant Contact, Campaign Monitor, Drip, SendinBlue, ConvertFox, GetResponse, ConvertKit, AWeber.
How to Enable Your Optin Form
Now that all your settings have been saved and you have connected the plugin to your email marketing service provider, you can enable or activate your customized opt-in form so it can go live on your website. Navigate to Optin Campaign > toggle on/off the optin form you want to activate.
Other Features of MailOptin
You thought you have seen it all? Well, there is more to come. Let’s look at some of the features in the plugin that can be very handy, and can equally maximize conversions when properly used.
- After Conversion – What happens after getting a lead? You can choose to display a success message like, “thank you for subscribing to our mailing list” or redirect your subscriber to a new URL. You can also decide to just close the optin form automatically after conversion as well as receive email notifications of new leads.
- New Post Notification – MailOptin will automatically trigger send a newsletter to your mailing list with each time you published a new post. There are also pre-defined templates to select for this purpose.
- Schedule – Simply have mastering of optin timing. At what time do you want to trigger your opt-in form? Use the schedule to make that happen.
- Click Launch Trigger: When an element is clicked on your website, you can force an optin form to be displayed. This is very effective for content upgrades; if you have free downloadable content, you could offer such content only for those who subscribe to your mailing list.
- Scroll Trigger: When a user scrolls a fixed percentage of your content, your optin from will be displayed. It’s a great way of attracting people who are engaged with your content.
Price and Availability
You can get MailOptin Lite for free here.
You can also purchase the plugin’s single site license for $59.
The three site license has a price tag of $99 and the Pro Plan goes for $199.
The Pro plan gives you full access to all MailOptin features. Check out what features are available per premium plan.
Final Verdict
From the makers of the ProfilePress, one of the best custom login and user registration plugin for WordPress. If you have ever used ProfilePress, you will know that these guys mean business.
MailOptin is simply a masterpiece; it is very easy to use, yet so powerful. Its feature set is amazing and is equally very affordable. Installation, activation and integration are pretty straight-forward. Before it is too late, know that the plugin has a robust documentation area and you can also take advantage of the priority support system.
Without a doubt, MailOptin is an all-round solution to start and grow your email list without too much hassle. It is a must-have in your WordPress plugin’s arsenal if you’re really focused on growing your business.
