How I Got a 250% Opt-In Rate Increase With No Work… With Popup Domination

Some of you may have noticed that I silently launched a new lightbox opt-in form on this blog late on Friday afternoon. I’ve already had emails asking me how I did it. The design is really professional and it also resulted in about a 250% increase in opt-ins from what I was getting using Aweber’s lightbox form. And the best thing is…. I didn’t have to design it myself or hire anybody to do it.

How cool is that?

I did it using a brand new Wordpress plug-in called Popup Domination, being released by my far-flung blogging buddy from England, Michael Dunlop.

Using Popup Domination

You install it just like any other Wordpress plug-in. You then visit the configuration screens under the Settings menu in Wordpress.

First thing you will do is select your design. The plug-in now includes 4 different styles of templates. Here are a couple of them:

With each of the 4 styles, you have 8 different color options for the button and 14 different color themes. Then, you set up your opt-in form HTML. The plug-in works with Aweber, iContact, GetResponse and Mailchimp right out of the box, however it will actually work with ANY provider because you can map your own form fields to the plug-in quite easily.

From there, you simply copy/paste your default opt-in form HTML as given to you by your provider. Nice and easy. I recommend you set up a separate opt-in form for tracking purposes – this way you can easily compare the performance of this form to your prior ones. (You’ll see a great result, trust me. )

Next, you’ll define the text and image to use inside your lightbox form. Here you can see the current setup for mine:

Set up your bullet point text and define your schedule. You can specify how quickly to show your opt-in to new arrivals, and how often to repeat. I’m currently testing mine with a 3 second-delay and a 7-day repeat. However, you can easily alter these (and I likely will be). Even if you don’t want it to repeat ever again, just define your repeat interval to some super long delay, like 999 days.

Now, if you’re a techie-type and want to modify some things, they’ve got that taken care of, too. From inside the plug-in, you can click on “Advanced” and get direct access to the CSS and PHP files. You can actually modify the plug-in itself if you so choose.

My Take On This

If you read Dunlop’s blog, you know that he recently launched a total redesign of IncomeDiary. One of the things he did was change the way he collected email addresses. Now, he has some things going on on-site, but this lightbox is definitely a big part of his strategy and he has been getting great results from it.

Even me… it has been on my to-do list for a little while now to beautify my lightbox opt-in. I was using Aweber’s built-in forms for awhile, but you can only customize so much with their setup. Some of the nice effects (like wrap-around borders, etc) just cannot be done using Aweber’s current lightbox forms. Which leaves me to either hire somebody to do it or attempt it myself.

For a little while, I even tried a customized opt-in form which was triggered when a person scrolled to the bottom of one of my posts. I thought it was pretty slick and I saw my friend, Erica Douglass, trying it. So, I contacted the person who did it for her and paid him to do it here. While the design and functionality was nice, it actually resulted in about a 0.5% DROP in conversion rate as compared to Aweber’s lightbox. So, I ended up reverting back to the lightbox.

As of this writing, I’ve only been running Popup Domination for a couple days, but it is resulting (so far) in about a 250% INCREASE in opt-ins as compared to the Aweber lightbox. Mind you, this is without even trying. I literally put my old copy into this form and installed it in a matter of minutes. I haven’t spent ANY time yet trying to fine-tune the copy or do much of anything new. So, just the design itself is getting me a 250% increase, with no additional work at all.

There are a couple things that I asked Michael to add to Popup Domination and he tells me he’s doing it. One is the ability to split-test multiple lightbox forms. That will be an AWESOME feature. Second is that the Aweber tracking image is being stripped out of the form HTML, meaning I cannot tell how many times the form loaded from inside of Aweber. He is fixing that, and as of the time I’m writing this post, I believe he is waiting for me to test his fix. So, I expect that issue won’t be the for long.

Let me Show You – In Video

I Absolutely Recommend This To You

It isn’t very often I see a Wordpress plug-in with the word “popup” in it and feel compelled to recommend it to anybody. But, I do highly recommend this plug-in to you if you want to build a list (and you should be).

Lightboxes work and they work like crazy. WELL-DESIGNED opt-in forms work even better, as this plug-in will prove to you. Here is why I think you should get this plug-in:

• Paying somebody to design forms like this will cost you FAR, FAR more than this plug-in. Trust me, I know.
• These forms are built with both aesthetics and PERFORMANCE in mind. They work, they don’t just look pretty.
• These forms are much better than any of the email list services can provide built-in. This is the kind of thing you would normally have to pay a person to customize for you.
• As I’ve covered a million times now, email list building is the #1 activity of your blog. Without a list, you have very little.
• Sitting there and hoping somebody notices your boring little opt-in form in your blog’s sidebar isn’t going to cut it. They WILL notice this form.

As of this post being written, this plug-in is only $37. It is an absolute, no-brainer, total steal at that price. So, get on over there and grab it. BTW, as you watch his video, you’re going to see somebody you recognize.

If you enjoyed this article, you might also like...

1. Using Multiple Opt-Ins To Track What Works [Aweber]
2. Blog Comments And a HUGE Wasted Opportunity
3. Insiders: An Opt-In Technique Worth Testing. I Will Be. :-)
4. Optimizing Your Blog’s Opt-in Rate
5. 2 Important Updates + Webinar [News]

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