What Popup Software Should You Use To Capture Email Addresses?

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It’s one of the most common questions web site owners have…what’s the best way to capture email addresses and build a list?  The first part of the answer is simple.  Use popup software.  Yes, people universally hate pop up windows.  But they are without a doubt the most effective way to capture email addresses.  Which leads us to the second part of the answer; what popup software should you use?

And this answer is more complicated because it really all comes down to testing and tracking.  Most people simply use whatever all the big guys use or whatever they saw on some other site that looked cool.  Or they’ll ask someone else “hey, what’s your opt-in rate with that software” and if it’s good, they’ll use the same thing.

But here’s the rub.  What works best on one site may not work best on another.  What works best in one market may not work best in another.  And what works best for someone else may not work best for you.  That’s why you must test different variables, with different popup software, and find what works best for you, on your site and in your market.

Which leads us to what software you should test.  There seems to be a mountain of titles available, but here are 3 that are worth your time to look at.  Some are free, some are not.  All work with WordPress and some also work with regular HTML.

 

UPDATE – Since making this post I have begun using/testing a new popup plugin for WordPress that does some things others do not.   Specifically, it allows you to run just about any type of popup (lightbox, header, footer, exit, in-post, sidebar, etc.), you can run multiple popups on a single page and it provides tracking so you can split test all the different popups and their variations.  Full details are available here.

 

Popup Domination
This software probably has the most buzz around it as it’s the software most commonly used by Internet marketers.  It creates lightbox popups, which means the screen darkens and a popup appears.  The user must subscribe to the offer or manually close the window.  Because this type of popup gains the full attention of the viewer, it’s typically the most successful (but again, you must test!).

Popup Domination comes both as a WordPress plugin and standalone script (meaning you can use it on regular HTML pages).  The WordPress plugin is probably the easier of the two to use.  In either case, you have already-done, nice-looking templates that you build your popups from.  It accepts opt-in code from all major email services.  And you can set the frequency of when the popups should appear.

Popup Domination costs $47, so it is a pretty good deal.  I tested the software for a while on this site before starting a new round of testing with the next product.

 

Super Popup Pro
This software is available in both free and paid versions.  And it’s only available for WordPress.  The free version is pretty limited.  But the paid version is pretty flexible.  For example, it will allow you to do lightbox popups just like Popup Domination (although it doesn’t come with the pretty templates), but in addition, you can also use it to create header or footer popups.

Header and footer popups are less obtrusive popups that appear at the top or bottom of a web page.  If you haven’t visited this blog in the past 30 days (and assuming I’m still testing it), you would have seen a black header popup appear at the top of this page.

As I mentioned, this is the software I’m currently testing (at least as of May 2011).  And here again are the links to the free and paid versions.

 

MaxBlogPress
This is another WordPress only popup.  And it’s completely free.  It’s “reviewware”, which means you can use it for free, but the publisher would appreciate a mention on your web site about it.

MaxBlogPress is the simplest of the bunch to use.  But it doesn’t create the “beautiful” popups like the other titles.  It creates simple popups that look pretty plain.  But don’t let that fool you.  With over 15 years of direct response marketing experience, I can tell you that plain and simple can often beat cool and eye-popping in head to head competition.  In other words, this software is worth testing.

MaxBlogPress can do the new school lightbox style popups or the old-school regular popups.  And it’s a breeze to use…if you can write a blog post, you can have it up and running in seconds.  As an added bonus, it can also be a great tool for quick and easy notification/news messages on your web site (where you’re just sharing important info to your visitors and not asking for an email address).

 

 

5 comments

  • Thanks Dave for the list you put together.

    Pop Up Domination sounds like something I will want to check on.

    I used aweber’s pop up (free with aweber) before but it popped up based on time (after x seconds). I also tried action pop up – it pops up either on entry or exit – that was nice for me. Now I am using opt in crusher (free) – not as aggressive as action pop up and I am still testing.

    Louisa

  • I bought WP Super Popup Pro after reading your blog and seeing it in action there.

    Just spent over an hour trying to figure out how to manage the settings and have given up for now. The demo video on the popup’s website has no narration, just a Jing screencast — and it moves much too fast to follow. The video is too small, so must be clicked to display at full screen – and even then it’s hard to follow. As far as I can tell, there is no written documentation for the plugin.

    This is just a caution to potential users who would expect the plugin to work easily right out of the box. I’m not giving up on it — and will report again, once I figure out how to use it.

  • maxblogpress free ??? I paid 97 bucks for that last year and pop-up domination is 77 not 47 bucks –

    i feel cheated ;-(

  • Dave, I bought the WP-Subcribers plugin a few weeks ago, but was too busy to set it up. When I bought it, there was a link to your “bonus” how-to video, which I can no longer find. As I am having a very difficult time following the official tutorials, I’m wondering if you can send the link to your video to my email address? THANKS.

    Tom