#19 - How to explode your email list... with pop-ups (without annoying your readers!)

Eight percent of people who landed on my website jumped into my email list. Now that is unheard of. I don't care how many links you have in blog posts and things like that. Like that is a crazy good conversion rate.

This is the Doing It Online podcast with your Host, serial entrepreneur, 6 and 7 figure funnel strategist and super nerd Kate McKibben, where every week we're here talking nerdy and sharing the things that actually work to help you do what you do online. Better, easier, and with a ton more profit too. Are you ready? Let's do it.

Hey, hey guys, it is Kate McGiven here and welcome to episode 19 of the Doing It Online podcast. And today I hope you're ready to nerd out with me a little bit because today we're going to be talking about something super nerdy, something not a lot of people like. And that thing is pop ups and how if you do them right, and there's definitely a wrong and a right way of doing pop ups, but if you do them right, they can absolutely explode your email list and be one of the best hands free things you can do to, to get your list building absolutely firing. So I like to say that pop ups are kind of like kale. No one really likes them, but man are they good for you. And the reason that no one likes them is because usually they've been done so very, very badly in the past and people have had bad experiences with them, so they've left a bad taste in your mouth kind of like kale. And now I'm here to show you how by simply adding a little garlic, a little butter, you can make these pops ups into something that everybody loves. Okay, I'm going to stop with the kale analogy now, so let me start with giving you like a little example. I like hard data, so I want to show you exactly how powerful a pop up can be when done right. So little backstory, but I used to use pop ups with my old business, Drop Dead Gorgeous daily and it worked really, really well. But for some reason I think there was like some CL with tech and plugins or something or other. But for some reason I just stopped using them when we changed from WordPress to ShowIt and just sort of just never reimplemented them. So we haven't used them for years. And then one day I saw a lifetime license deal for a software called Convert Box and I'm a sucker for a lifetime license. I'm pretty sure I own most of them. Bought it. I love the fact that it could be used across multiple, multiple domains. Like it wasn't just a WordPress plugin, which meant that we could use it, you know, on Showit, we could use it on our blog and you know, a couple of other places. So I figured let's get it. I was procrastinating from doing something else, probably from writing a webinar. I always managed to procrastinate when I'm supposed to be doing those. And it just thought, you know, why not let's just set one up, let's see what could happen. You know, no harm giving it a go, right? It's kind of my motto. So this pop up, I set it up, it literally took me about 15 minutes from start to finish. That includes, you know, actually, you know, installing the little bit of code onto the website, logging into convert box, creating the pop up, setting it up, hitting go. So literally 15 minutes. And it brought in nearly 500 new email subscribers in the first five weeks. The other thing is I set it up and then I just kind of forgot about it. So I didn't come back and check. But 500 new email subscribers in five weeks for just 15 minutes work. It's pretty good ROI. And I'm. And don't be thinking I've got huge website traffic here. I do not. My main website, like we are quality over quantity all the way here. So that, that 500 people was actually about, was an 8% conversion rate. So a little bit over actually. So 8% of people who landed on my website jumped into my email list. Now that is unheard of. I don't care how many links you have in blog posts and things like that. Like that is a crazy good conversion rate. So I was pretty convinced after that and we thought we probably should get a bit more strategy going with this rather than just whacking up whatever pop up. And we are going to start testing some new things and see if we can make that even higher. But I wanted to jump in and share it with you guys because it is such a simple thing that any of you can go away and do. And it's so low cost. Like I said, I use convert box, which I don't have the price of off the top of my head. But I like the fact it was a lifetime license because we've all got a thousand monthly recurring fees already, right? But there's other ones out there. It definitely wasn't the cheapest piece of software I've ever purchased. There's ones like hello bar and a bunch of other things. So it's relatively low cost, super easy to set up. And it's just something that you can set up, you can leave it and it can just, you know, help you to make growing your list that little bit easier. Make sure that you're getting those, you know, extra handful of people each day, week, month, whatever it is. And it's one of those cumulative things that just grows and adds to the snowball of momentum that you are creating.

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So now that I've convinced you to go and add a pop up, I want to make sure that you do it in the right way so you don't just create something that is insanely annoying for everyone and create a terrible experience for the new people landing on your website. So there's three things that you need to be able to do that. First of all, you need the right tool, like I said, and this is really important because we're in the next couple of the next two tips will kind of COVID off why. But you need something that does these few things. So first of all there's lots of ones out there. So you may already have one, but you need to make sure that you choose a software that isn't going to slow down your website. One, these are going to break or clash with things. So that's why I liked that it was a third party and not like another plugin. You need to make sure that it looks great on your main site. So on desktop and on mobile, really important. The number of people browsing your website on mobile is probably the majority now. So need to make sure it looks great on mobile as well. And you also need to make sure it has a little bit of logic behind it because we want to set a few rules to make sure that this thing isn't annoying everybody. So convert box does all of those things. That's why I like it. But there's, you know, there's lots of other ones out there, so you may already have one or there may be another one that you want to use. I have no preference to what works best for you. So the second thing that you need to do to make sure your pop up is, you know, converts really well and doesn't just annoy people is get the messaging right. So I like to be a little bit tongue in cheek and have a bit of fun with these things. And mine actually says like, hey, we all know pop ups suck. But you know what would suck more is if you missed out on, you know, X, Y, Z, insert whatever your awesome freebie is. So it's having, it's a little bit tongue in cheek, it's a little bit playful. If that works with your branding, feel free to, you know, have a play with something similar or something else that works. You just want to make sure that you, when a pop up comes up, it's like this split second reaction that people have where they'll either be like, hey, that's interesting or that's annoying. So you, I think it's good to have a bit of fun with it. You want to make sure that, you know, even if you, it's not sort of right for your branding to be a bit cheeky or a bit playful, that you at least always lead with what is in it for them, not just get on my email list so I can email you. Please don't ever do that. You know, always lead with like, have a really great opt in bribe ready to go. That's what you're promoting here. And lead with the benefit with like, hey, do you want X outcome? Here's my free thing to help you with that. People are far less likely to be annoyed by something if it's actually something that is useful to them or something that they've got interest in or, or that they want. So very important number two is that you get that messaging and that wording right because I said it's. You've got literally a fraction of a second to either engage someone or annoy them. The third thing is, is that you need to actually set it up so it's not annoying. Like one of my pet peeves is when as soon as you land on a website, this thing takes over whatever page you landed on and you have to unclick it and it'll have some really passive aggressive thing like no, I don't like awesome stuff or no, I like being stuck or whatever as a link that you have to click. Don't do that. That's, that's. No one likes that. I've been testing out two different types of pop ups. Like convert box has got a, you know, different options like Banners at the top. This feels like an ad for convert box. It's 100% not guys, I just happen to buy it and like it. But I know you know, it's not just them hello, Bar Thrive leads, I think it's called as a few other ones out there. They've all got lots of options.

But yeah, I'm testing out a few different designs at the moment and the one which seems to be working best is when it's almost like a little chat box coming up from the bottom rather than a whole page takeover. Anyway, but the real key here is don't set it so that it shows right away. You need it to leave a little bit of time so that it's only going to show to people who first of all have actually shown that they're interested in the content and your site and what you're doing. There's no point showing to people who haven't had that second to decide yet. And it's also, it's allowing them to actually see and start reading and start, you know, consuming or whatever it is the, the link that they clicked through to. So if, because again, it's about like using common sense and thinking about if someone saw, you know, something you shared on Pinterest or on Facebook or they Googled something and they're like, oh, that sounds interesting, I want to read it. And they click through and before they can even read a second of your blog post or article or whatever it is, this thing pops up about something else. It's just annoying. No one likes that. So usually you want to have a look for and they should all do it where, you know, make sure that your pop up allows people to. It won't show basically until they've shown a little bit of investment, a little bit of commitment, a little bit like they're interested in the content. So we've got ours set so that it only shows the people who have scrolled down to 30% of the page or more. So usually that allows people to read a little bit and scroll down and then it, you know, it kind of comes up and it's a bit more of a gently, gently rather than like a bam in your face. Um, another thing that's really important settings wise is or two things. One, we've got it set so if they close that pop up, they will never see it again. It's not going to show it to again another week or another month. It's just gone. They've said, no, I'm not interested and like, okay, sweet, no worries. And the third thing is that you know, they don't close it or they don't, they don't engage with it, that we're only going to show it to them one more time. So and not on the same day either. So if they come back to the site in a few days time and they scroll to 30% again, that pop up will come up again but that'll be the last time they see it. So these settings are all things you can play with, see what feels right to you, think and think about it like from your experience, like what do you find annoying and what do you, you know, when have you seen something that's actually been more like oh hey, yeah, I am interested in that. So those are my tips guys on how to make pop ups not suck. And I do strongly encourage you that if you have got a spare 15 minutes and you like to start adding more people to your email list for, you know, for very little cost, very little time outlay that you go and it's something you go and have a play with. And if you do and if you, you love it, if you have success with it, make sure you shout me out, let me know on Instagram, hit me up at Kate McKibben. I'd love to hear if you've got a cool tool recommendation as well. Let me know. I'm all about the software I think as you guys should figure by now. But that's it so far guys for this week. I hope I've given you a little bit of something that you can go away and get implement into your business, get started on and of course guys, make sure you come back next week. I've got another killer episode for you. I think you're really, really going to love it. I can't wait to share it with you. But in the meantime, keep doing what you do and I'll see you on the next episode. Bye.

Thanks so much for listening to the Doing it online podcast. If you love this episode, don't forget to subscrib, subscribe and leave us a review. And if you're ready to take your online course sales to the next level with your own six or seven figure funnel, let Kate show you exactly how today@Stealmyfunnel.com.