Email pop ups aren’t like a jack in the box. They don’t startle, irritate, or offend your readers. Your email pop ups should appear at the right time and provide so much value that your website visitors don’t mind them.

At least, that’s how it’s supposed to work.

Many marketers try email pop ups and discover that those pop ups increase bounce rates and worsen the user experience. That’s because they’re doing it wrong.

If you know what you’re doing, you can implement email pop ups on your website and enjoy increased conversions, better brand awareness, and a more faithful community of followers and customers.

How? Let’s see.

What Are Email Pop Ups?

Email pop ups are overlays that appear in front of your normal website content. They can be small or large depending on your goal, and they typically have an X in the corner so visitors can get rid of them if they’re not interested in the offer.

More specifically, email pop ups are designed for email collection. You offer your audience something of value in exchange for their email addresses, like you see above.

I’ll discuss the parts of an email pop up later on, but keep in mind that every element matters. If you’re not targeting the right audience with the right offer, you won’t get conversions.

Simply pushing email pop ups live on your website via Hello Bar won’t automatically improve your metrics. Instead, you have to find the perfect storm of elements to tempt your audience.

Email Pop Ups Statistics and Curious Facts

Email marketing statistics are pretty widely available. The problem is that they often contradict one another.

One source will tell you to use email pop ups. Another will say they’re useless. The important thing is to verify the veracity of your source and its purpose.

In this case, we want to look a little deeper than email pop ups in general. Specifically, we want to know how user behavior should dictate our marketing efforts.

The latest research tells us that 99 percent of website visitors won’t buy anything during their first visit to your website.

That’s pretty staggering. If you’re counting on your awesome sales page copy to convert visitors the second they arrive on your site, you’re missing out on profits.

If the majority of consumers won’t buy anything when they first land on your site, how do you optimize your site for future conversions? In other words, how do you bring those people back?

Email pop ups are a good choice.

They interrupt the user experience very briefly to display an incentive.

Why Email Pop Ups Are Important to Your Business

Let’s talk about email marketing for a second.

It’s one of the most effective ways to reach your audience on a consistent basis.

Facebook has reduced consumers’ access to organic content. Twitter streams move so quickly that many people never see your posts. And even if consumers visit your blog, they’re not guaranteed to return regularly.

That makes a good case for email marketing in general and email pop ups in particular. To make email marketing effective, you need email addresses.

Email Pop Up Design Checklist

Design matters. If your email pop ups don’t engage or interest your audience, that little X will get clicked more often than you want.

There are four primary elements involved in an email pop up. Let’s build one together based on those factors. We’ll pretend we’re creating an email popup for an ecommerce company that sells sporting equipment.

Ready? Let’s dive in.

Pop Up Copywriting

You need good pop up copywriting to really sell your offer. If you use bland, vague, or unappealing language, your audience will assume that your lead magnet or other incentive doesn’t stack up to what they want.

Speaking of lead magnets, you need a highly valuable offer. Learning how to create a lead magnet is an art form, and I encourage you to master it.

But back to email pop up copywriting. What should your headline say? How can you attract attention and compel your reader to look at the rest of your popup?

I recommend generating excitement. Let’s write a headline for our email pop up that a fitness audience won’t be able to ignore.

That’s pretty compelling, right? If you buy lots of sports equipment, you want to protect your bank account. Great headlines often ask questions the marketer already knows the answer to. It sets up the rest of the email pop up for success.

But that’s not enough. We need a visual to send home the headline.

Visual Content

Visual content can make or break your email pop up. You don’t have to include an image, but I highly recommend it. We’re naturally drawn to photographs, illustrations, and other graphics. In fact, using artificial intelligence for photo retouching can massively enhance your visuals and attract your visitors’ attention.

To spice up our email pop up, I’m going to add an image that relates to the headline. In other words, I’m mirroring the headline so the reader recognizes its congruence.

See what I mean? We have a clean, crisp stock photo of all different types of sports equipment. You can use your own images or look for stock photos — whatever works for you.

Value Proposition

The headline and image are great, but we’re not done yet. Now, we have to send home the value proposition.

So far, we’ve only hinted at the lead magnet I have in store for our fictional audience: A way to save money on sports equipment. With the body content or subheadline, I need to specify exactly what people who sign up will receive.

If you’re vague, your audience won’t know what exactly you’re offering. And because of that confusion, they’ll ignore the offer.

Here’s what I came up with:

In this case, I’ve given readers two reasons to sign up. First, they get my lead magnet — a pricing guide to help them make sure they don’t overspend when they could find an item for a cheaper price — as well as weekly coupons. Compelling, right?

Call to Action

We’re almost done, but we haven’t written a call to action. The call-to-action phrases you use will determine whether your audience fills in that box with their email addresses. It’s that important.

We could use any number of calls to action. You have limitless possibilities. And later, I’m going to show you how to A/B test your CTAs so you find the best wording for your audience.

For now, though, I’m going with one of my favorites:

I like this type of call-to-action phrase because it’s written in the customer’s voice and it restates the lead magnet. Plus, it’s energetic and punchy.

Don’t use something generic like “Subscribe” — or worse, “Submit.” Get creative with your CTAs.

11 Email Pop Ups Best Practices and Examples to Insanely Grow Your Conversions

We’ve made our own email pop up, but how can you make sure you’re creating the most effective pop ups possible? My 11 tips and best practices will ensure you’re always ready for your audience.

1. Your Email Pop Ups Should Feature One Powerful Call to Action

If you try to use multiple calls to action, you’ll either confuse your audience or irritate them.

You might have heard of a phenomenon known as analysis paralysis. When confronted with too many options, people often shut down.

It’s like staring at a closet full of clothes and thinking, “I have nothing to wear.” That’s not true, of course, but it feels true because you’re overwhelmed by too many choices.

Since you have to get dressed in the morning, you’ll eventually recover from that form of analysis paralysis. However, your readers don’t have to sign up for your opt-in email list.

This doesn’t mean you can’t have multiple calls to action on your site. We’ll discuss that later, but for now, just limit yourself to one CTA per email pop up. And make sure it’s powerful, convincing, and click-worthy.

2. Your Email Pop Ups Will Have an Eye-Catching Design

Consumers respond well when they’re faced with aesthetically pleasing design. You want your audience to see your email pop up and take notice.

Colors, images, font choices, and other elements should blend together seamlessly. Let’s take a look at our example from before and see if we can’t make it even more attractive.

I made just a few simple changes, but they make a difference.

First, I changed the CTA button color to orange, which reflects the color of the basketball in the picture and stands out better from the rest of the elements on the email pop up. When I switched up the fonts to make them more unique and rounded out the corners on the email text field.

Simple? Yes. Effective? Most likely.

3. Your Pop Ups Will Be Triggered at the Right Time

When you create a Hello Bar email pop up, you get to decide when it appears. Some websites trigger an email pop up to appear as soon as someone accesses the website. That’s not a good choice.

Your visitor hasn’t had a chance to acclimate him or herself to the site. When visitors are automatically faced with a pop up, they often leave the site entirely or, at the very least, close the pop up. They’re not ready for it yet.

You have two primary options for triggering Hello Bar email pop ups.

You can trigger them after a specific time delay between five and 60 seconds, or you can have your pop ups triggered based on scroll activity. Either way, your visitors get used to your website and better understand what you’re all about. Only then do you make your offer.

4. Your Pop Ups Will Be Personalized for Specific Website Pages or Specific Traffic Sources

Let’s go back to my sports equipment example. I created a fictional lead magnet to help my fictional visitors make better buying decisions for sports equipment. That’s a great lead magnet for people who are at the top of the funnel. They’re not ready to buy.

I might use that email pop up on my blog pages and homepage. Visitors to those pages are typically getting to know the brand and seeking helpful information.

But what about my sales pages? If someone is looking at a page that sells a particular piece of sporting equipment, they’re farther along in the buyer’s journey. In fact, they might be ready to buy.

In this case, I might offer a lead magnet like a coupon or discount code. Not only does it incentivize the visitor to join my email list, but it also gives them another reason to buy the product — saving money.

5. Your Pop Ups Will Be Optimized for Mobile Users

Your Hello Bar dashboard not only allows you to create email pop ups for different screen sizes, but also to preview how a particular pop up will look on those screens.

As you can see, the image from the pop up I showed you at the beginning of this article disappears when a visitor views it on mobile. That way, there’s more room for the text and the email input field.

Never discount the need for an amazing user experience. If your pop ups aren’t mobile friendly, you’ll lose potential leads.

6. Your Pop Ups Will Not Disturb Your Website Visitors

I already touched on this before, but I want to restate it. Don’t use email pop ups as a disruption. You’ll just irritate your prospects.

That’s why we recommend time delays. If you give your visitors the chance to settle in, so to speak, before you trigger the pop up, they’ll be more likely to give it careful consideration.

7. You’ll Present a Pop Up at the End of Your Content to Reward Visitors Who Made it to the End

One option when designing your Hello Bar email pop ups is to trigger the pop up when the visitor scrolls to the bottom of the page. The idea behind this setting is to reward visitors who read the entire page.

These pop ups are great for blog posts. You’ve given your audience lots of juicy content to read, and if they complete the article, they get a surprise treat, such as a lead magnet or coupon.

8. Use an Amazing Exit Intent Pop Up

Another option is to use an exit intent popup. This type of pop up takes over the entire screen when a visitor attempts to leave your site. You can see an example right here on the Hello Bar blog.

Exit intents are great for capturing email addresses at the last moment. Of course, you can use them for other goals, as well. For instance, our Hello Bar exit intent encourages visitors to create a free account.

9. Use a Top Bar and Side Bar on Your Website Pages With Awesome Calls to Action

Top bars and sidebars are also effective for email collection. You can use Hello Bar, for instance, to create a bar that appears at the top of your site.

Make sure to use a fantastic call to action so visitors are compelled to click. You can even animate the CTA so it draws more attention to itself.

10. Offer a Lead Magnet Using a Pop Up to Grow Your Email List

Lead magnets are all the rage. They allow you to contribute something of value.

Back in the old days — you know, six or seven years ago — you could get email signups simply by inviting people to do so. These days, people get more email than they want, so you have to spice up the deal. That’s what lead magnets do.

11. A/B Test Your Email Pop Up Calls to Action and Headlines to Find Out What Converts Best

You’ve created a fantastic email pop up. You’re in love with it. But will it convert your visitors?

There’s only one way to find out. Not only do you want to push that email pop up live, but you want to create a variation and launch an A/B test.

For instance, your pop ups might be identical except for the image you use or the headline wording. After the A/B test is complete, test the “winner” against another variation. Test a new element every time.

Hello Bar allows you to automatically start and stop your A/B tests. No stress or complicated coding involved.

Hello Bar Email Pop Up Case Study: How Nutrition Secrets Increased Our Sales 56% by Implementing Awesome Email Pop Ups

My old website, Nutrition Secrets, allowed me to experiment with lots of email pop ups and other marketing hacks. Once I started collecting email addresses, I boosted sales by 56 percent.

Those are pretty good results. We used leading questions to gamify the process a little and spark interest. It was an amazing learning experience that shows the power of email pop ups.

Set Up Email Pop Ups Using Hello Bar in Under 5 Minutes and Start Growing Your Email List: Sign Up For free Now

Now that you have all the information you need to create fantastic email popups, it’s time to get started. You can create your own at HelloBar.com by signing up for a free account. That’s right. It’s free.

In fewer than five minutes, you can have your own email pop ups live on your site. Who knows? You might get a subscriber within another five minutes. Since the tool goes to work immediately, you don’t have to worry about the hustle.

Conclusion

Do you want to grow your email list? Of course you do.

But you can’t achieve that goal without the right tools. That’s where Hello Bar comes in.

Create your own email pop ups so you don’t have to rely on boring signup methods on your site. You’ll grab more attention and increase your conversions.

Do you use email pop ups on your site? Why or why not?