In 2021, the investment in AI marketing tools reached a total of $111.4 billion. This year, Microsoft has reportedly invested an additional $10 billion in the startup known as “OpenAI,” which released its highly successful ChapGPT platform in November of last year.
Why should you care?
There is a lot of attention on AI startup investments because AI tools have the potential to revolutionize many industries, including digital marketing. AI is a rapidly growing field with the capability to automate and optimize a wide range of tasks and blow up the status quo; which will lead to significant improvements in efficiency, accuracy, and cost savings.
Investors are particularly interested in AI tools because they have the ability to create innovative solutions to complex problems and disrupt traditional industries. And disrupting a global industry that taps into a large market promises big financial returns.
AI startups often focus on developing cutting-edge technology and algorithms that analyze and process large amounts of data quickly and accurately. This technology can be used to develop new products and services, improve existing ones, and create entirely new industries.
AI tools have the power to create significant economic value
According to a recent report by PWC, AI is projected to contribute $15.7 trillion to the global economy by 2030. This massive value has attracted a lot of attention from investors who are looking to capitalize on this trend.
In summary, the attention on AI startup investments is driven by the potential of AI tools to:
Revolutionize industries
Provide innovative solutions
Create significant economic value.
As AI continues to evolve, we can expect to see continued interest in AI startups and investments.
10 AI marketing tools you should know about
There are many new marketing startups that are designed and built to use AI to help businesses improve their marketing efforts. Here are some examples of the latest and hottest marketing startups that leverage AI:
Persado labels its technology as “The Generative AI Platform to Motivate Every Individual to Engage and Act”.
The new age focus uses natural language processing to help businesses create more effective marketing messages. Its platform can analyze customer data and generate language that resonates with specific audiences.
Leadspace is an AI-powered B2B lead generation platform that helps businesses find and engage with their ideal customers. Its platform uses machine learning to analyze customer data and identify high-quality leads.
Their promise: “To find, create and prioritize closeable business. Again and again (using technology powered by A.I)”.
Receptiviti is an AI-powered customer analytics platform that helps businesses understand customer sentiment, personality, and behavior. Its platform uses natural language processing to analyze customer data and provide insights that can be used to improve marketing campaigns.
The technology promises to provide: “The world’s most accurate insights into personality, psychology, and emotions from language. And understand how your customers, users, prospects, and audiences think and feel — and predict how they’ll behave”
Indico is an AI-powered text analysis platform that helps businesses extract insights from unstructured text data, such as customer reviews, social media posts, and survey responses. Its platform uses machine learning to analyze text and identify patterns and themes.
Their claim: “Award-winning artificial intelligence solution gives document-intensive industries the best of all worlds, enabling data-driven decision-making, with unparalleled speed, at enterprise scale”.
Luminate.ai is an AI-powered customer engagement platform that helps businesses improve customer interactions and drive more sales. Its platform uses natural language processing to understand customer inquiries and provide personalized recommendations and offers.
Their focus: “We use AI to illuminate opportunities to make the best use of and invest in data, to leverage for strategic advantage and accelerate decision making”.
Pattern is an AI-powered platform that helps businesses optimize their e-commerce sales. Its platform uses machine learning to analyze customer behavior and recommend pricing, promotions, and product strategies.
How they work is a bit revolutionary and starts with a big statement. “Our biggest differentiator? We buy your inventory and you benefit from our acceleration technology and services at no fee.”
Persosa is an AI-powered personalization platform that helps businesses create personalized website experiences for their customers. Its platform uses machine learning to analyze customer behavior and generate personalized content and offers.
Their big claim: “Persosa’s patented technology empowers marketers and digital publishers to collect, own and unlock value against their consumer data – increasing media performance while delighting consumers with connected and personalized experiences. Our integrated platform tracks identities, builds audiences, and delivers personalized content all in real time shortening the “data to dollars” cycle from weeks to milliseconds, unlocking media performance and operational efficiencies”.
CaliberMind is an AI-powered B2B marketing analytics platform that helps businesses optimize their marketing campaigns and improve their sales performance. Its platform uses machine learning to analyze customer data and provide insights and recommendations.
The website has a small summary of what it does and the benefit to you: “The CaliberMind Platform is the engine that connects all of your data, organizes it, and then puts brand interactions on a timeline so your next steps are clearer and your decisions can make a bigger impact”.
Pathmatics is an AI-powered advertising platform that helps businesses understand how their competitors are advertising and how they can improve their own campaigns. Its platform uses machine learning to analyze ad data and provide insights and recommendations.
It promises to help you:
Discover creatives that resonate
Dive into digital display advertising data to Identify trends that drive growth
Madgicx is an AI-powered advertising platform that helps businesses automate and optimize their ad campaigns across multiple channels. Its platform uses machine learning to analyze ad data and make real-time optimizations to improve performance.
In essence: “Madgicx’s uses AI & Machine learning to ensure maximum return on your ad spend”.
If you look at almost every AI tool mentioned here they are all trying todistill the global data noise with AI and provide insights for better decision making.
So…
“A.I. can empower us to make sense of all the online noise and big data and make smarter decisions at scale”.
These are just a few examples of the many new marketing startups that are designed and built to use AI tools.
As AI continues to evolve, we can expect to see even more innovative marketing startups emerge that leverage artificial intelligence to help businesses improve their marketing efforts.
We are living in the era of personalization. Marketers have abundant data at their fingertips, but they don’t always make the most of the opportunity it provides.
Less than three-quarters of marketers implement personalization in their email strategy, according to research by Digiday and Jeeng. And while 78% of those that do personalize emails with the subject’s name, just 51% personalized the body copy.
It’s time to change. If you’re in the 49% of marketers who aren’t going all out with email personalization, I’m here to help.
When it comes to personalizing your email marketing, you don’t have to struggle. There are relatively easy ways to use personalization in your emails that go beyond just using a name. In this article, I’ll show you exactly what they are, as well as explaining what a personalized email is, what you can personalize, and why personalized email marketing is so effective.
Ready? Then let’s begin.
What is a Personalized Email?
Email personalization is a marketing strategy that involves customizing email content to the specific preferences, interests, and behaviors of individual recipients. Truly personalized email marketing goes beyond addressing the recipient by their name in either the subject line or body content. It tailors almost the entire email based on the data you hold about each customer.
For example, you could create personalized email blasts based on user data from your SaaS platform. Each customer would receive a personalized email showing how often they used each of your tool’s features and an estimate of the ROI they generated.
Grammarly’s insights email is a fantastic example of this:
It details how many weeks in a row you have used the software, how many words you have checked, your vocabulary choices, tone, and many more insights. Every part of the email is personalized based on your usage of the tool, while also showing how you compare to other users. It’s a great way to increase engagement and get you excited to use the tool again.
Email personalization doesn’t have to be this detailed. They can be as simple as an abandoned cart email that highlights products that users have left in their online shopping basket without checking out. Only two parts of the email are personalized (the user’s name and their products), but it’s still incredibly effective.
What to Personalize in an Email
There is certainly no shortage of things you can personalize in customer emails. I’ll give a rundown of the most common elements below, but the world really is your oyster here. All of these elements can be personalized differently, and if there’s a strategy or approach you want to take, then go for it.
Subject lines: Subject lines are the first impression your email makes on the recipient, so make the most of them. You can personalize subject lines with the recipient’s name, a reference to their interests, or a recent interaction with your brand. Doing so can significantly increase the chances your email gets opened.
Preview text: This is the snippet of text that appears next to the subject line in your inbox and serves as a brief introduction to the email’s content. You can customize the preview text to align with the recipient’s preferences or needs, further enticing them to open your email.
Bodycontent: The body of the email offers multiple opportunities for personalization. Obviously, you’ll want to include the recipient’s name. But don’t miss the opportunity to tailor the message to their interests, and use dynamic content to showcase relevant products, services, or articles based on their behavior. This is a great way for e-commerce brands to personalize emails based on a customer’s recent shopping history.
Images and videos: You can tailor the images, videos, and other visual elements in the email to appeal to the recipient’s tastes, preferences, or demographic. This can include featuring products they’ve recently clicked on.
Offers: If you are creating personalized emails, you should definitely be creating personalized offers to include. Targeted discounts, exclusive deals, or personalized product recommendations are incredibly effective ways to encourage users to take action.
Timings: It’s not just the content of the email you can personalize. You can also tailor your sending schedule to personalize the delivery time based on each user’s past engagement patterns or time zone.
Why Personalize Emails?
Personalized email marketing has become essential to successful marketing strategies, and for good reason. Here are some of their biggest benefits:
Increased Engagement
Email personalization has a much higher chance of capturing your recipient’s attention. When they receive an email that speaks directly to their interests, needs, or preferences, they are way more likely to open it, interact with the content, and, possibly, make a purchase.
Enhanced Customer Experience
Personalized email marketing creates better, more positive experiences for your customers. By delivering content that is specifically relevant to each recipient, businesses show they understand their customers on an individual level. This level of personalization leads to significantly higher customer satisfaction levels.
Improved Conversion Rates
Email personalization has a positive impact on conversion rates. By delivering the right message to the right person at the right time, businesses can significantly increase the likelihood of users taking action. In particular, personalized offers can be very effective at encouraging users to make a purchase — especially if customers understand the offer has been created for them and them alone. Exclusivity sells.
Higher ROI
Personalized emails offer a higher return on investment (ROI) compared to generic, mass-marketing emails. By focusing on individual recipients and delivering tailored content, you increase the relevance and effectiveness of your personalized email campaigns.
Does Email Personalization Work?
The short answer is a resounding “Yes.” According to HubSpot’s State of Marketing report, segmentation and personalization are the two most effective email strategies.
Email personalization offers multiple other benefits, too, such as:
Increased open and click-through rates
Decreased unsubscribe rates
Higher customer satisfaction
Opportunities to re-engage customers
Email personalization is also easy to implement. For instance, you could:
Send an offer only if a recipient has recently brought an item.
Change wording based on location or time zone.
Personalize language and images.
However, like any other area of marketing, email personalization has its limitations. For example, some techniques, like customer recommendations, may not work for everyone.
You can also over-personalize and sound too familiar, which can, frankly, freak people out. Stick to critical areas, which we detail later.
Now you’ve got a picture of email personalization and its benefits, let’s discuss my 15 best practices to ensure you’re personalizing emails effectively.
Steps to Ensuring Effective Email Personalization
Do you want to increase your personalized emails’ chances of being clicked on, read and drive conversions? Then read my 15 best practices to follow below.
That sounds simple enough, but where do you start? By collecting information from readers using sign-up forms.
When subscribers sign up to your email list, you can ask them some additional questions beyond their email address or name.
For instance, you could ask for their:
location
birthday
interests
occupation
Whatever information you ask for, keep it short and sweet, like this example:
Next, use integrations to gather even more data.
Integrations are perfect if you don’t have internal resources to collect information. You probably have a lot of data stored on third-party platforms (like your Shopify store) that you can use to personalize emails.
Finally, you should create a subscriber preference center to find out what your readers want.
Once you’ve started collecting the right kinds of data, you can personalize your subject lines.
2. Use Personalized Subject Lines
Subject lines have always been important in the world of email marketing, but they must be specific for the best results.
For example, they should differ from industry to industry, audience to audience, and so on.
You can run tests to find the most effective ones. For example, you can modify the content of your subject lines based on all the data you’ve already collected about a subscriber’s wants, interests, age, location, and more.
Open rates and conversion rates are only up from there.
Behavior-triggered emails are real-time reactions to how your customers are using your product. This is where the future of email marketing is heading — and triggered emails have a good open rate to boot.
Behavior-triggered emails can streamline customer communication. They let you communicate with customers without having to think about it, help you convert readers, and could extend the lifetime value of existing customers.
You might not always realize it, but you get these types of emails all the time. You know when a website emails you because you haven’t logged in or made a purchase for a while? That’s a behavior-triggered email.
You can send out triggered emails for tons of reasons, such as to welcome readers, re-engage them, or upsell products or services.
Analytics tool Moz delivers unexpected but ingenious trigger emails that are a perfect example of personalization. They send an email to a user when Moz has uploaded new data to the user’s account. It simply informs them that there is new data to see. There also is a conspicuous call-to-action button that states “View My Campaign Data.”
It’s a clever use of behavior triggers, as it brings customers back to their website and gets them to use the product. It’s an expertly timed and implemented reminder that Moz is there and has value for the customer.
Several tools for sending great trigger emails are available. For instance, there’s Intercom for B2B, GetVero.com for marketers, and Klaviyo for e-commerce.
4. Use Subscriber Tags
Subscriber tags let you send personal CTAs in your email content and for triggering emails.
With this technique, you can tag subscribers based on their choices, like visiting a specific page on your site or clicking on a link. Then, write out emails to recipients with matching tags.
This approach saves a ton of time because you can segment all your workflows through just one email. Most mailing list providers, such as ConvertKit, offer this feature.
5. Ask the Right Questions
You need to know your subscribers before you can start personalizing effectively. And that means asking them questions. Add a couple of questions to your email signup form to learn more about each user and start personalizing their emails from the start.
For example, create a customer survey that asks customers:
What brought them to your website?
Why did they start using your service?
What do they need help with most?
These questions can help you find out what you’re doing right (or wrong) pretty quickly, and it makes targeted emails a breeze. Don’t be too generic, though. To stand out, you can entice customers using emotional appeals, emojis, humor, and freebies.
Alternatively, ask opinion questions. People like to feel like you value their thoughts.
6. Add “Recommendations for You”
We’ve already talked about some email personalization techniques, and now it’s time to dig deeper.
Start personalizing your emails by recommending more purchases or actions according to a reader’s past behavior.
Amazon is notorious for this with its “Frequently Brought Together” upsell feature, and Netflix uses a similar approach to encourage customers to view another movie.
It works because readers often appreciate the “recommendations” if they’ve liked similar previous purchases.
Rather than trying to reach all your readers with a single promotion, just send it to those who have shown interest in a related topic. You can do this in any industry by suggesting related products and services. Perhaps offer a discount to encourage sales.
7. Use and Optimize Landing Pages
Although personalizing your emails is a valuable step toward targeting your customer more effectively, there is more that your business can do. You can pair personalized emails and landing pages to push your success rate further.
Not only should your email and landing page have a consistent look and copy, they both should have the same personalized call to action for the customer. This will lead to the customer having a unified experience, which will make them more likely to convert, as you are showing them personalized content based on data.
Nuffield Health, a fitness organization, decided to make this part of its strategy, and the results were impressive.
Their aim was to increase membership subscriptions and generate more leads by pairing personalized emails and landing pages. They proceeded to build several landing pages that matched different customer segments and wrote custom emails for each segment. Both the emails and the landing pages contained similar content with the same focus that aimed to convert customers based on their specific interests in the business.
The plan worked, as Nuffield Health experienced a substantial increase in click-through and conversion rates. They went from a 1% conversion rate from past campaigns to 8%. It proved that customers would respond well to a more personalized and targeted campaign that was in sync across all areas of their contact with the business.
8. Add a Sense of Urgency
There are tons of tools to help you incorporate dates and times into your emails.
Doing this is the perfect approach for driving engagement because these limited-time offers focus on urgency to push people into action.
By creating a sense of urgency, you can build toward a paid offer. Just don’t let your customers forget or hesitate to order. That’s why creating a custom deadline is so effective.
Are you thinking of applying this approach? There are templates available, or your mailing list provider should have a tool.
You can also sync your emails with countdowns for sales, product launches, and giveaways.
9. Build Customer Personas
A customer persona is a representation of your ideal customer. Companies use them to identify the features of their perfect customer and their usual behavior.
The more specific you get with these personas, the better you will understand who your customers are and what they need from you. Ultimately, this enables you to improve your business and enhance email personalization by fulfilling their needs.
You create customer personas by using a span of data. Instead of asking just one question, you can group customers using a combination of actions they take and attributes they have.
Once complete, your personas might look something like this:
There are plenty of step-by-step guides on building personas to help you develop them per best practices, including:
identifying your target audience
seeing the world through your customers’ eyes
understanding your customers’ needs and frustrations by doing research
using data about your target audience’s online behavior, likes/dislikes, etc.
implementing email personalization techniques to match your customers’ wants and needs
10. Use Location and Time Zones
It’s common marketing wisdom that it’s better to send emails at certain times of the day compared to others. Depending on your target audience, they may prefer getting your email as they are about to sit down and start working. Or they may prefer it at the end of the day.
You can use that information to send emails at an optimal time, but what if your customers are spread across different time zones? Bulk sending your emails at one time is n’t going to cut it.
If you want to truly personalize your emails, you need to personalize the delivery time, too.
Send time personalization is easy to set up with a few clicks, and companies like MailChimp allow you to do this.
This tactic can be incredibly effective. For example, skincare brand AHAVA partnered with Sailthru to personalize email delivery times and saw a:
5% increase in open rates
13% increase in total clicks
20% increase in average order value
11. Personalize Your Brand
Email personalization doesn’t have to be achieved through customer data alone. You can also take steps to make your brand more personable. Creating a more personable and relatable brand can help make your company more appealing to customers and help you forge a deeper, more meaningful connection — as if they were speaking to a friend.
There are several strategies you can use to personalize your brand:
One of the easiest ways to personalize your brand is to make sure you send every email from a real employee.
Every email the company sends comes directly from Bhanu, the company’s co-founder, and is complete with all of the niceties you would expect when speaking to someone. He asks how you’re doing, offers advice, lets recipients know they can ask questions and wishes them well at the end.
It’s still a corporate email, but it doesn’t feel like it.
12. Mark Milestones
Marking customer milestones is another effective email personalization tool.
It shows your customers you’ve noticed their achievements and that your company appreciates them. In turn, this enhances customer engagement, making them feel valued.
Milestones worth marking include:
your customer’s first anniversary
a customer’s birthday
the accumulation of a set number of points
the completion of a course or similar
13. Imagery
They say a picture paints a thousand words. Or, to put it another way, a single image can express a thought much better than a heap of text.
Keeping your messages short is vital now as people tend to skim-read emails on the go, but it’s not just about that. Imagery can impact your customers in other ways.
Personalizing the imagery in your emails allows you to build an emotional connection with your customers, driving them to take action and potentially influencing their buying decisions.
One of the other advantages of pictures is their flexibility.
You can use images in many ways, from showcasing products to illustrating the benefits of a particular product or just brightening a customer’s day.
There are just a few things to consider.
Images must be:
Eye-catching
Engaging
Relevant
Additionally, you can personalize images to specific customers by their data, preferences, and their location.
14. Reach Out to Customers
Cart abandonment, poor engagement, and lack of follow-up all affect your bottom line. However, you can overcome them with email personalization.
Reaching out to customers can get them back on track and keep them from abandoning their carts. For instance, you could send:
A coupon code in your abandoned cart emails
An offer for something a customer looked at but didn’t buy
An email asking why they left without buying and offering assistance
A follow-up email three days after their visit
Next, engage.
Send out email tutorials or similar. You can personalize these messages by looking at your data to see how your customers use their purchases and where they most need your help.
Finally, follow up.
Does your customer understand everything their purchase offers?
Are there features they could be making more of?
Anything specific about the product/service that can make a particular buyer’s life easier?
Yes? Then follow up and solve their problems!
15. Pay Attention to the Small Details
Aside from the areas already discussed, you can use email personalization further by:
A/B testing different versions of an email
Changing the copy of an email with each click based on customer data
Addressing any previous interactions
Including a call to action
Segmenting your audience into groups that share similar interests or use cases for your product
As I’ve already said, there’s no limit to the things you can personalize in an email.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is email personalization?
Email personalization is the practice of customizing email content for individual recipients based on their unique characteristics, preferences, behaviors, and interactions with your brand. It goes beyond basic personalization elements like addressing the recipient by name and includes subject lines, body content, offers, and calls-to-action to create a highly individualized and relevant communication experience.
Does email personalization work?
Yes, email personalization has proven to be highly effective. Personalized emails outperform generic mass emails in terms of open rates, click-through rates, and conversions. By delivering content that resonates with recipients on a personal level, businesses can capture attention, drive engagement, and increase the likelihood of desired actions, leading to improved marketing outcomes.
Are personalized emails more effective?
Yes, personalized emails are generally more effective than generic mass emails. By tailoring the content to the specific interests, needs, and behaviors of recipients, personalized emails create a more relevant and engaging experience.
What is the benefit of personalized email marketing?
Customized emails can increase engagement and deliver a better user experience, so it’s worth taking some extra time.
How much does it cost to set up personalized emails?
The cost of setting up email personalization usually depends on two main factors: the number of emails you need to send and your plan.
What kinds of emails should you personalize?
You can personalize emails that are promotional or transactional.
Conclusion
Email personalization is one of the most efficient marketing channels, and many small and medium-sized companies are using it to grow their businesses. This strategy can increase customer loyalty, boost conversion rates and deliver serious ROI.
However, if you’re not taking the right approach, you won’t get results.
If you want conversions, you need to take email personalization deeper than just using a customer’s first name. This includes adapting to different time zones, addressing customers’ wants and needs, and using imagery.
In short, email personalization can make your customers feel valued—and people who feel valued are more likely to make purchases from you.
Do you use email personalization in your campaigns? Which techniques work well for you?
In 2021, the investment in AI marketing tools reached a total of $111.4 billion. This year, Microsoft has reportedly invested an additional $10 billion in the startup known as “OpenAI,” which released its highly successful ChapGPT platform in November of last year.
Why should you care?
There is a lot of attention on AI startup investments because AI tools have the potential to revolutionize many industries, including digital marketing. AI is a rapidly growing field with the capability to automate and optimize a wide range of tasks and blow up the status quo; which will lead to significant improvements in efficiency, accuracy, and cost savings.
Investors are particularly interested in AI tools because they have the ability to create innovative solutions to complex problems and disrupt traditional industries. And disrupting a global industry that taps into a large market promises big financial returns.
AI startups often focus on developing cutting-edge technology and algorithms that analyze and process large amounts of data quickly and accurately. This technology can be used to develop new products and services, improve existing ones, and create entirely new industries.
AI tools have the power to create significant economic value
According to a recent report by PWC, AI is projected to contribute $15.7 trillion to the global economy by 2030. This massive value has attracted a lot of attention from investors who are looking to capitalize on this trend.
In summary, the attention on AI startup investments is driven by the potential of AI tools to:
Revolutionize industries
Provide innovative solutions
Create significant economic value.
As AI continues to evolve, we can expect to see continued interest in AI startups and investments.
10 AI marketing tools you should know about
There are many new marketing startups that are designed and built to use AI to help businesses improve their marketing efforts. Here are some examples of the latest and hottest marketing startups that leverage AI:
Persado labels its technology as “The Generative AI Platform to Motivate Every Individual to Engage and Act”.
The new age focus uses natural language processing to help businesses create more effective marketing messages. Its platform can analyze customer data and generate language that resonates with specific audiences.
Leadspace is an AI-powered B2B lead generation platform that helps businesses find and engage with their ideal customers. Its platform uses machine learning to analyze customer data and identify high-quality leads.
Their promise: “To find, create and prioritize closeable business. Again and again (using technology powered by A.I)”.
Receptiviti is an AI-powered customer analytics platform that helps businesses understand customer sentiment, personality, and behavior. Its platform uses natural language processing to analyze customer data and provide insights that can be used to improve marketing campaigns.
The technology promises to provide: “The world’s most accurate insights into personality, psychology, and emotions from language. And understand how your customers, users, prospects, and audiences think and feel — and predict how they’ll behave”
Indico is an AI-powered text analysis platform that helps businesses extract insights from unstructured text data, such as customer reviews, social media posts, and survey responses. Its platform uses machine learning to analyze text and identify patterns and themes.
Their claim: “Award-winning artificial intelligence solution gives document-intensive industries the best of all worlds, enabling data-driven decision-making, with unparalleled speed, at enterprise scale”.
Luminate.ai is an AI-powered customer engagement platform that helps businesses improve customer interactions and drive more sales. Its platform uses natural language processing to understand customer inquiries and provide personalized recommendations and offers.
Their focus: “We use AI to illuminate opportunities to make the best use of and invest in data, to leverage for strategic advantage and accelerate decision making”.
Pattern is an AI-powered platform that helps businesses optimize their e-commerce sales. Its platform uses machine learning to analyze customer behavior and recommend pricing, promotions, and product strategies.
How they work is a bit revolutionary and starts with a big statement. “Our biggest differentiator? We buy your inventory and you benefit from our acceleration technology and services at no fee.”
Persosa is an AI-powered personalization platform that helps businesses create personalized website experiences for their customers. Its platform uses machine learning to analyze customer behavior and generate personalized content and offers.
Their big claim: “Persosa’s patented technology empowers marketers and digital publishers to collect, own and unlock value against their consumer data – increasing media performance while delighting consumers with connected and personalized experiences. Our integrated platform tracks identities, builds audiences, and delivers personalized content all in real time shortening the “data to dollars” cycle from weeks to milliseconds, unlocking media performance and operational efficiencies”.
CaliberMind is an AI-powered B2B marketing analytics platform that helps businesses optimize their marketing campaigns and improve their sales performance. Its platform uses machine learning to analyze customer data and provide insights and recommendations.
The website has a small summary of what it does and the benefit to you: “The CaliberMind Platform is the engine that connects all of your data, organizes it, and then puts brand interactions on a timeline so your next steps are clearer and your decisions can make a bigger impact”.
Pathmatics is an AI-powered advertising platform that helps businesses understand how their competitors are advertising and how they can improve their own campaigns. Its platform uses machine learning to analyze ad data and provide insights and recommendations.
It promises to help you:
Discover creatives that resonate
Dive into digital display advertising data to Identify trends that drive growth
Madgicx is an AI-powered advertising platform that helps businesses automate and optimize their ad campaigns across multiple channels. Its platform uses machine learning to analyze ad data and make real-time optimizations to improve performance.
In essence: “Madgicx’s uses AI & Machine learning to ensure maximum return on your ad spend”.
If you look at almost every AI tool mentioned here they are all trying todistill the global data noise with AI and provide insights for better decision making.
So…
“A.I. can empower us to make sense of all the online noise and big data and make smarter decisions at scale”.
These are just a few examples of the many new marketing startups that are designed and built to use AI tools.
As AI continues to evolve, we can expect to see even more innovative marketing startups emerge that leverage artificial intelligence to help businesses improve their marketing efforts.
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According to Statista, email marketing is expected to reach almost $11 billion by the end of 2023.
Before you can use email marketing to reach your audience, it’s imperative to build a strong list. But there’s a problem: List building often annoys people.
The techniques you choose to request and collect email addresses can affect the user experience. Sometimes so negatively that users leave your site.
For example, the most popular list-building method is the pop-up, right? This often includes intrusive interstitials, which are page elements that obstruct users’ views.
The truth is that people do not like to see a pop-up, especially when it looks like an obstacle. A study by the software review site G2 found that 82% of those surveyed “hated email pop-ups.” But, as Klaviyo notes, pop-ups do work.
As with the other email list-building tactics we’ll talk about in this article, it’s all a matter of how you deploy your pop-ups.
With that in mind, let’s look at ways to get email leads without harming the user experience.
How to Ask for Emails Politely
Is it possible to create an email leads list without disturbing visitors? Of course. We just have to make sure our practices don’t look like content barriers.
Here are some methods you can use to ask for emails without annoying your visitors:
If you’re not getting enough email leads, the biggest leak in your website may be that you’re not asking for emails at the end of your content.
Most visitors decide whether to subscribe after reading your content. By triggering a pop-up as soon as they reach the bottom of your content, you’re asking them to make the decision right away. Thus, it converts well. Sometimes it even converts users who were unwilling to subscribe at the beginning.
Since this pop-up triggers when users finish reading the content, it works like a call to action (CTA)—giving your visitors an actionable next step. For that reason, it doesn’t look like a barrier.
I’m using the WP Subscribe Pro plugin in WordPress, and it is effectively doing this job.
WP Subscribe Pro isn’t your only option, though.
Another option is Dreamgrow Scroll Triggered Box. As your reader scrolls down the page, this plugin will appear to grab their attention, but it won’t conceal your content. You can customize the plugin’s look, feel, and message, which is important for keeping your brand messaging consistent.
2. Introduce a Pop-up When a User Signals Exit-intent
Exit-intent is technology you can use to determine when a user is about to leave a site. Some list-building services have integrated it into their businesses because it works like a charm.
This is what happens: When someone is about to close or leave the browser tab, the action triggers a pop-up. As a result, the user will stop to see what just popped up.
Exit-intent pop-ups for email subscriptions get positive results. You can use the method to convert your outgoing visitors. Set up an exit-intent pop-up with an appealing invitation to subscribe.
OptinMonster is more than an exit-intent plugin. It lets you place opt-in forms in a variety of places on your blog, including floating footer bars, slide-in sidebars, and full-page covers.
Example: OptinMonster provides excellent pop-up services, including this exit-intent feature.
Wunderkind is great for exit-intent pop-ups. With Wunderkind, you can set up unobtrusive pop-ups to appear when your readers intend to leave your site. For instance, when your readers hover over the back button, the pop-up will appear, prompting them to enter information.
3. Slide in a Request after a Page Scrolls
One of the gentlest methods for capturing email leads is to slide in a request to subscribe once someone scrolls down a certain percentage of a page. The subscribe box can slide in from the bottom corner. This type of entrance is very gentle but eye-catching, so it works perfectly.
Slide-in subscribe leads often have a much better conversion rate than any regular pop-up. For example, you may find that sliding in after 80 percent of a page scrolls is the best converting area.
Here’s an example of an e-commerce brand using a page scroll pop-up to remind the consumer that they have items in their cart.
So which plugin should you use for this strategy?
Hustle is one option. This plugin allows you to create messages that slide in and show themselves to your users at the exact moment you pick.
With Hustle, you decide who sees it (e.g., the user is logged in, the user is not logged in) and where (e.g., homepage, blog posts, etc.).
4. Display a Sticky Top Bar
Display a relatively simple, noticeable bar that stays at the top of the screen and scrolls with the page so that it remains within a user’s sight all the time. It will get attention and convert more.
The message we usually use on the bar is a call to action, but the results are pretty good when you use it as an invitation to subscribe, too.
A sticky top bar is a perfect, high-converting place for your subscribe form, which you can use to increase your email conversion rate faster.
Hello Bar provides top bar services. It performs well and has already acquired many authoritative customers. DIYthemes is one of them, gaining 1,180 email subscribers in 30 days of using Hello Bar.
Example: Hello Bar effectively uses a sticky top bar to collect email leads on its own site.
5. Offer a Content Upgrade
A content upgrade is a link magnet that provides upgraded value to content as a reward for subscribing.
Suppose you plan to write a post titled “Top 3 Ways to Get Organic Traffic.” You also have a resourceful PDF, “30 Different Sources of Getting More Traffic.” What you can do is offer readers a chance to download the PDF from inside the new post by opting in (giving you their email addresses).
So, try providing upgrades to your content as subscribing rewards and see how it improves your conversion.
Example: Leadpages is one of the best landing page solutions. They also have a content upgrade feature. Here is a sample:
Or perhaps a pop-up is more your style. In that case, consider Sleeknote:
This paid tool allows you to create a pop-up form that promotes eBooks, content upgrades, discounts, etc. Sleeknote also comes with numerous integrations and analytics.
6. Stage a Welcoming Home Gate
The homepage is the most authoritative page, and sometimes the most visited page, of a website. You can leverage it to get email leads.
You can use the home gate, or the home featured box, to stage a warm welcome for visitors. You can attract them right on the spot by providing a bribe to subscribe. Your homepage usually has better traffic.
Example: When I thought of home gate, Smart Blogger came to my mind first.
7. Add a Sidebar
A sidebar provides additional navigation value to users. It’s a standard feature on many blog pages and a good place to include a subscribe form.
By setting up an appealing subscribe box on your sidebar, you can gently attract visitors to subscribe. It’s the perfect location—prominent but unobstructive.
If you have a blog with a sidebar, chances are you have an ad leading to a landing page. One way to get more attention to the ad is to have it scroll down the page as your reader continues to read your content.
If you’re technically minded, you can also follow this tutorial for adding a Scrolling Sidebar to your WordPress site. (Note: The tutorial is old but still works great.)
8. Launch a Dedicated Landing Page
A dedicated landing page for email marketing can lift your conversion rate and help with email lead generation.
Create an optimized landing page for email leads and subscriptions. To make it a high-converting one, you can apply the following tips:
Offer something appealing that will attract visitors.
Design it beautifully with contrasting colors and placement.
Include reviews or social proofs to gain trust.
Adorn it with images or insights that will attract attention.
Make the subscribe button noticeable. Try a colorful button like red, green, or blue.
Example: Adam Connell of Blogging Wizard designed a beautiful landing page with an appealing offer, colors, images, and associations.
There are plenty of landing page plugins to choose from. Here are a few of my favorite ones and what’s so great about them:
Leadpages: If you’re looking for an easy way to create and manage multiple landing pages, sales pages, and webinar registration pages, then Leadpages is the tool.
Unbounce: This popular app gives you the power to create, publish, and optimize landing pages without doing development. Unbounce has a heavy emphasis on customization.
Instapage: The Instapage platform enables you to get started with a professional-looking landing page without breaking the bank.
Pagewiz: This all-in-one landing page tool helps you get professional landing pages up and running in no time. As with the other tools, you don’t need design or programming experience to get started.
If you’re stuck on what to create, many of the above plugins have templates. You can also take inspiration from your favorite bloggers and e-commerce sites.
9. Position a Subscribe Box at the End of Your Content
This method is similar to the first one, “Present a Pop-up at the End of Your Content.” The only difference is that the subscribe box won’t pop up. It will stay in place as a normal subscribe box right underneath the content.
If you think that pop-ups at the end of your content will annoy people, here is the solution. Set up a regular subscribe box at the bottom of your content. It will serve the same purpose, but it won’t grab as much attention as a pop-up.
Example: Copyblogger has one under all of their blog posts.
If you’re in the market for a subscription box plugin, consider AWeber Webform Widget. This plugin allows you to install an AWeber web form on your WordPress blog and prompts visitors to subscribe to your list when commenting or registering on your blog.
10. Submit a Survey
Surveys are great for gathering insights or votes from users. But with a few tweaks, a survey becomes a powerful weapon in email lead generation.
For instance, Qualaroo is an insight marketing tool. It has an interesting feature to generate an email leads list through a survey. What I like about it is that the method is unique.
You can set up a survey subscribe form using Qualaroo or a similar tool. The form should remain in the screen’s bottom corner and will undoubtedly increase your conversion rate.
Selection, Timing, and Behavior
While many of the plugins we recommended above are unobtrusive, you still want to consider your website visitors’ experience. Are your requests for email leads annoying? Are they taking away from the overall experience?
To answer that, consider these three points: selection, timing, and behavior.
Let’s discuss what each of those means.
First up is selection.
How can you select which method will work for you? There are no straightforward recommendations because all websites are not the same. So, here are some best practices:
A good rule of thumb here is to determine how long visitors tend to spend on a particular webpage and then create a pop-up that displays at the 50 to 60 percent point.
So, if visitors tend to stay on your homepage for 90 seconds, then aim to have the pop-up appear within 45 seconds to 54 seconds.
Now that you’ve got selection and timing worked out, it’s time to consider behavior. In other words, how do your pop-ups and other email lead plugins work?
Why should you control the behavior? Here are the reasons:
To stop annoying visitors.
To stop people from leaving your site.
To stop losing conversions.
To prevent showing subscription messaging to the same person again and again, you should use cache. You can set the cache to 15 to 30 days, so the visitors who see the messages once won’t see them again in the same period. Of course, standard forms that don’t annoy anyone, such as the sidebar, home gate, top bar, and so forth, can appear all the time.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do you have more questions about how to generate email leads without harming the user experience? Here are answers to some of the most common questions on the topic.
How much does an email lead cost?
The average cost per lead varies by industry and lead generation method. For example, a lead for a marketing agency can be as low as $22 or as high as $173. Within retail, that cost range is much smaller, with a low of $25 and a high of $41.
How can I get free email leads?
The best way to collect free email leads is with an email newsletter subscription box on your website. With the right conversion techniques, you can get users to subscribe to your newsletter with just a few clicks. You can also sweeten the deal by offering a free download, such as an eBook or e-course.
What are the 3 ways to generate leads?
There are three main ways to generate leads: search engines, content marketing, and social media. Using search engines and social media, you can create campaigns that drive users to your website or even allow them to sign up directly within the campaign—for example, a newsletter sign-up campaign on Facebook. Using content marketing, you can entice visitors to your website or via guest posts to subscribe to your newsletter.
Conclusion
List building is a game of understanding your audience and looking for opportunities to capture email leads.
My suggestion is to choose some of these methods wisely, according to the tastes of your users. Also, be sure to test the methods you decide to try.
While focusing on list building, though, you should also consider the user experience. That’s where our tips on selection, timing, and behavior come into play.
Do you have any questions about lead building? How about any tips? Leave them in the comments below.
About The Author: Abrar Mohi Shafee is a digital marketer and blogger by passion. He is determined to guide people on “how to blog in an artistic way.” Follow him on Twitter @shafee219.
Wondering which types of posts your fans and followers like best? Looking for a reliable way to experiment with new organic content on Facebook? In this article, you’ll learn how to A/B test organic Facebook content using native Meta tools so you can create better content that helps you achieve your marketing goals. How Marketers […]
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the practice of optimizing websites to improve their visibility and rankings on search engine results pages (SERPs).
In today’s digital landscape, SEO plays a crucial role in the success of online businesses. It helps drive organic traffic, enhances brand visibility, and increases conversions.
This article will give you a comprehensive overview of key SEO strategies and the best SEO metrics.
Whether you’re a beginner or looking to refine your existing SEO knowledge, this guide will provide valuable insights to optimize your online presence and drive meaningful results.
To effectively navigate the world of SEO, it’s essential to understand its basic components.
Search engine algorithms and ranking factors determine how search engines evaluate and rank websites. Factors such as relevance, authority, and user experience influence search rankings.
On-page SEO optimization focuses on optimizing elements directly on your website. Keyword research and targeting involve identifying relevant keywords and incorporating them strategically into your content. By understanding what users are searching for, you can align your website’s SEO copywriting with their queries.
Content optimization is crucial for both search engines and users. Crafting compelling headlines, subheadings, and meta tags that include targeted keywords helps search engines understand the context of your content. Additionally, optimizing the content itself with keyword-rich, informative, and engaging text improves user experience and increases the likelihood of your content searchability.
URL structure and internal linking are important on-page optimization techniques. Creating descriptive and user-friendly URLs improves website navigation and search engine crawlability. Having an SEO friendly domain name helps too. Internal linking helps search engines discover and understand the relationships between different pages on your website, enhancing overall visibility and SEO ranking potential.
Off-page SEO optimization focuses on activities that occur outside your website but impact your search rankings. Link building tactics involve acquiring high-quality backlinks from authoritative websites. These links serve as endorsements, signaling to search engines that your website is trustworthy and relevant.
Social media signals and engagement also play a role in off-page optimization. Active social media presence, sharing content, and engaging with your audience can increase brand visibility, generate traffic, and potentially attract natural backlinks.
By understanding and implementing these SEO standards, you can lay a solid foundation for improving your website’s visibility, attracting organic traffic, and ultimately achieving your online business goals. After reading all this, you may want to consider creating an SEO checklist!
Technical SEO best practices
Technical SEO plays a crucial role in ensuring that your website is optimized for search engines to crawl, index, and understand its content. Implementing the following technical SEO best practices can greatly enhance your website’s performance and visibility.
Website speed and performance optimization
Website speed and performance optimization are paramount. Slow-loading websites can negatively impact user experience and search rankings. By minimizing server response time, optimizing code and file sizes, leveraging browser caching, and compressing images, you can significantly improve your website’s speed and performance.
Mobile optimization and responsive design
Mobile optimization and responsive design are essential in today’s mobile-centric world. With the majority of online searches happening on mobile devices, having a mobile-friendly website is crucial for user experience and search rankings. Implementing responsive design ensures that your website adapts and provides an optimal viewing experience across different devices and screen sizes.
XML sitemaps and robots.txt files
XML sitemaps and robots.txt files are important for search engine crawlers. XML sitemaps help search engines discover and index your website’s pages more efficiently. Robots.txt files provide instructions to search engine crawlers, guiding them on which pages to crawl and which to exclude from indexing.
Canonicalization and duplicate content issues
Canonicalization and duplicate content issues can harm your website’s SEO. Canonical tags help consolidate duplicate content and specify the preferred version to be indexed, avoiding potential penalties for duplicate content. Regularly auditing and resolving duplicate content issues can help improve your website’s visibility and rankings.
Structured data markup for enhanced search results
Structured data markup provides additional context and information to search engines, resulting in enhanced search results. Implementing schema markup on your website can enable rich snippets, knowledge graph panels, and other visually appealing search result features, increasing click-through rates and visibility.
Local SEO is vital for businesses that rely on attracting customers from specific geographic areas. Implementing local SEO strategies can help increase visibility in local search results and drive relevant traffic to your business.
Optimizing your Google My Business (GMB) listing is crucial. Ensure your GMB profile is complete and accurate, including essential information such as business name, address, phone number, and hours of operation. Encourage customers to leave reviews on your GMB listing, as positive reviews can boost your visibility and reputation.
Local keyword targeting and creating location-specific content is key to attracting local customers. Research and incorporate relevant local keywords into your website’s content and meta tags. Develop location-specific landing pages or blog posts that address the needs and interests of your local audience.
Online reviews and reputation management are paramount for local businesses. Encourage customers to leave reviews on platforms such as Google, Yelp, or industry-specific directories. Respond promptly and professionally to both positive and negative reviews to show that you value customer feedback.
By implementing these local SEO strategies, you can improve your business’s visibility in local search results, attract local customers, and build a strong online reputation within your target area.
Advanced SEO tactics
As the SEO landscape continues to evolve, advanced tactics can give your website a competitive edge. Here are some advanced SEO tactics to consider:
Voice search optimization
Voice search optimization is crucial as more users rely on voice assistants. Optimize your content for voice queries by using natural language, answering common questions, and targeting long-tail keywords that align with conversational search queries.
Featured snippets and schema markup
Featured snippets and schema markup can significantly enhance your website’s visibility. Structured data markup using schema.org can help search engines understand your content better, increasing the chances of appearing in featured snippets and other rich results.
Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)
Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) create fast-loading versions of your web pages, improving mobile user experience. Implementing AMP can enhance your website’s visibility in mobile search results and provide a better user experience, leading to higher engagement and improved rankings.
Video and image optimization
Video SEO and image optimization can boost your website’s visibility in blended search results. Optimize videos and images with descriptive titles, alt tags, and relevant keywords. Consider hosting videos on platforms like YouTube to take advantage of their search visibility.
International SEO considerations are essential if you have a global audience. Use hreflang tags to indicate language and regional targeting. Implement country-specific domains or subdirectories, and ensure your content is localized and culturally relevant.
Using SEO software for analytics and measurement is essential for understanding the effectiveness of your SEO efforts and making data-driven optimizations.
Tracking SEO performance and using keyword research tools allows you to monitor your website’s visibility and identify areas for improvement. Regularly track keyword rankings to assess the impact of your optimization efforts and make necessary adjustments.
Utilizing Google Analytics and other SEO tools provides valuable insights into your website’s performance. Google Analytics offers data on organic traffic, user behavior, and conversions. Additionally, other SEO tools provide metrics like backlink analysis, competitor research, and site audits.
Analyzing user behavior and engagement metrics helps you understand how visitors interact with your website. Evaluate metrics such as bounce rate, average session duration, and page views to identify areas of improvement and optimize user experience.
Conversion tracking and goal setting allow you to measure the impact of SEO on your business objectives. Set up conversion tracking in Google Analytics to measure actions such as form submissions, purchases, or newsletter sign-ups. This helps evaluate the effectiveness of your SEO campaigns and make informed decisions.
SEO trends and future considerations
Staying updated with the latest SEO trends and future considerations is crucial for maintaining a competitive edge.
The impact of ChatGPT SEO and AI is significant. Search engines are leveraging AI and machine learning algorithms to improve search results and understand user intent better. It’s important to adapt your SEO strategy to align with these advancements and focus on creating high-quality, relevant content for SEO.
Voice search and mobile-first indexing are gaining prominence. With the rise of voice assistants and mobile usage, optimizing for voice search and ensuring mobile-friendly experiences are essential. Focus on conversational keywords, structured data, and responsive design to cater to these trends.
User experience (UX) and Core Web Vitals have become vital ranking factors. Search engines prioritize websites that provide excellent user experiences. Pay attention to factors like page load speed, mobile responsiveness, and navigation to improve UX and meet Core Web Vitals benchmarks.
Evolving search engine algorithms and updates require continuous adaptation. Search engines regularly refine their algorithms to provide better search results. Stay informed about algorithm updates and industry best practices to ensure your SEO strategies remain effective.
By keeping an eye on these trends and future considerations, you can proactively adjust your SEO approach, optimize for emerging technologies, and deliver exceptional user experiences that align with the evolving search landscape.
Wrapping it up
Implementing the key strategies and tips discussed in this article can significantly improve your website’s visibility and domain authority.
Remember the importance of continuous learning and adaptation in the ever-evolving world of SEO. Stay updated with industry changes, algorithm updates, and best practices to stay ahead of the competition.
By consistently refining your SEO approach and staying informed, you can achieve long-term success in driving organic traffic, improving user experience, and achieving your online business goals.
Imagine being able to quickly generate all types of content—headlines, entire posts, even translations—with the click of a button. Imagine significantly reducing your effort and time spent staring at a blank screen.
Say hello to Jetpack AI Assistant.
Jetpack AI Assistant is seamlessly integrated as a block within the WordPress.com editor. (If your WordPress site is hosted elsewhere, the AI Assistant is also available through the Jetpack plugin.) This powerful new tool is still in the experimental phase, but here’s just a sampling of what it can already help you do.
5 ways you can make writing a breeze with Jetpack AI Assistant
Create customized content
Jetpack AI Assistant utilizes a conversational system so that you can “chat” with it in natural language. Enter a prompt, such as “Write a list of Tokyo’s must-visit destinations,” and watch as the Assistant crafts an engaging piece of content. Compelling blog posts, detailed pages, structured lists, and comprehensive tables can be created in seconds.
Perfect your spelling and grammar on the fly
Ensure your content always reflects professional standards with Jetpack AI Assistant’s spelling and grammar correction features.
Adjust your tone to match your audience
Whether you’re aiming for formal or conversational, Jetpack AI Assistant can adjust the tone of your content to your goals and audience makeup.
Find that perfect creative title
Struggling to find a good title that will really capture your audience’s attention? It can be the hardest part of writing a post! Jetpack AI Assistant has you covered by reading the text and then creating suitable and compelling headlines.
Translate your writing with a single click
The Jetpack AI Assistant can translate your text into numerous languages, allowing you to effortlessly reach across locales and cultures.
And that’s just the start of what Jetpack AI Assistant can do.
Can this really be free?
Yes, it can! For a limited time, Jetpack AI Assistant is free to use for all WordPress.com customers.
Activate the block with the Inserter or the “/” command shortcut. (If you didn’t know, here’s a fun tip: Hit the “/” button while in the post or page editor and type the name of the block you’re looking for. In this case, it would be “AI.”)
Your rocketship to seamless content creation
This is just the beginning! We’re working to expand Jetpack AI Assistant’s capabilities, so stay tuned for even more exciting features in the coming weeks.
Try the AI Assistant today and discover an even more streamlined creative process in WordPress.com.
According to Statista, email marketing is expected to reach almost $11 billion by the end of 2023.
Before you can use email marketing to reach your audience, it’s imperative to build a strong list. But there’s a problem: List building often annoys people.
The techniques you choose to request and collect email addresses can affect the user experience. Sometimes so negatively that users leave your site.
For example, the most popular list-building method is the pop-up, right? This often includes intrusive interstitials, which are page elements that obstruct users’ views.
The truth is that people do not like to see a pop-up, especially when it looks like an obstacle. A study by the software review site G2 found that 82% of those surveyed “hated email pop-ups.” But, as Klaviyo notes, pop-ups do work.
As with the other email list-building tactics we’ll talk about in this article, it’s all a matter of how you deploy your pop-ups.
With that in mind, let’s look at ways to get email leads without harming the user experience.
How to Ask for Emails Politely
Is it possible to create an email leads list without disturbing visitors? Of course. We just have to make sure our practices don’t look like content barriers.
Here are some methods you can use to ask for emails without annoying your visitors:
If you’re not getting enough email leads, the biggest leak in your website may be that you’re not asking for emails at the end of your content.
Most visitors decide whether to subscribe after reading your content. By triggering a pop-up as soon as they reach the bottom of your content, you’re asking them to make the decision right away. Thus, it converts well. Sometimes it even converts users who were unwilling to subscribe at the beginning.
Since this pop-up triggers when users finish reading the content, it works like a call to action (CTA)—giving your visitors an actionable next step. For that reason, it doesn’t look like a barrier.
I’m using the WP Subscribe Pro plugin in WordPress, and it is effectively doing this job.
WP Subscribe Pro isn’t your only option, though.
Another option is Dreamgrow Scroll Triggered Box. As your reader scrolls down the page, this plugin will appear to grab their attention, but it won’t conceal your content. You can customize the plugin’s look, feel, and message, which is important for keeping your brand messaging consistent.
2. Introduce a Pop-up When a User Signals Exit-intent
Exit-intent is technology you can use to determine when a user is about to leave a site. Some list-building services have integrated it into their businesses because it works like a charm.
This is what happens: When someone is about to close or leave the browser tab, the action triggers a pop-up. As a result, the user will stop to see what just popped up.
Exit-intent pop-ups for email subscriptions get positive results. You can use the method to convert your outgoing visitors. Set up an exit-intent pop-up with an appealing invitation to subscribe.
OptinMonster is more than an exit-intent plugin. It lets you place opt-in forms in a variety of places on your blog, including floating footer bars, slide-in sidebars, and full-page covers.
Example: OptinMonster provides excellent pop-up services, including this exit-intent feature.
Wunderkind is great for exit-intent pop-ups. With Wunderkind, you can set up unobtrusive pop-ups to appear when your readers intend to leave your site. For instance, when your readers hover over the back button, the pop-up will appear, prompting them to enter information.
3. Slide in a Request after a Page Scrolls
One of the gentlest methods for capturing email leads is to slide in a request to subscribe once someone scrolls down a certain percentage of a page. The subscribe box can slide in from the bottom corner. This type of entrance is very gentle but eye-catching, so it works perfectly.
Slide-in subscribe leads often have a much better conversion rate than any regular pop-up. For example, you may find that sliding in after 80 percent of a page scrolls is the best converting area.
Here’s an example of an e-commerce brand using a page scroll pop-up to remind the consumer that they have items in their cart.
So which plugin should you use for this strategy?
Hustle is one option. This plugin allows you to create messages that slide in and show themselves to your users at the exact moment you pick.
With Hustle, you decide who sees it (e.g., the user is logged in, the user is not logged in) and where (e.g., homepage, blog posts, etc.).
4. Display a Sticky Top Bar
Display a relatively simple, noticeable bar that stays at the top of the screen and scrolls with the page so that it remains within a user’s sight all the time. It will get attention and convert more.
The message we usually use on the bar is a call to action, but the results are pretty good when you use it as an invitation to subscribe, too.
A sticky top bar is a perfect, high-converting place for your subscribe form, which you can use to increase your email conversion rate faster.
Hello Bar provides top bar services. It performs well and has already acquired many authoritative customers. DIYthemes is one of them, gaining 1,180 email subscribers in 30 days of using Hello Bar.
Example: Hello Bar effectively uses a sticky top bar to collect email leads on its own site.
5. Offer a Content Upgrade
A content upgrade is a link magnet that provides upgraded value to content as a reward for subscribing.
Suppose you plan to write a post titled “Top 3 Ways to Get Organic Traffic.” You also have a resourceful PDF, “30 Different Sources of Getting More Traffic.” What you can do is offer readers a chance to download the PDF from inside the new post by opting in (giving you their email addresses).
So, try providing upgrades to your content as subscribing rewards and see how it improves your conversion.
Example: Leadpages is one of the best landing page solutions. They also have a content upgrade feature. Here is a sample:
Or perhaps a pop-up is more your style. In that case, consider Sleeknote:
This paid tool allows you to create a pop-up form that promotes eBooks, content upgrades, discounts, etc. Sleeknote also comes with numerous integrations and analytics.
6. Stage a Welcoming Home Gate
The homepage is the most authoritative page, and sometimes the most visited page, of a website. You can leverage it to get email leads.
You can use the home gate, or the home featured box, to stage a warm welcome for visitors. You can attract them right on the spot by providing a bribe to subscribe. Your homepage usually has better traffic.
Example: When I thought of home gate, Smart Blogger came to my mind first.
7. Add a Sidebar
A sidebar provides additional navigation value to users. It’s a standard feature on many blog pages and a good place to include a subscribe form.
By setting up an appealing subscribe box on your sidebar, you can gently attract visitors to subscribe. It’s the perfect location—prominent but unobstructive.
If you have a blog with a sidebar, chances are you have an ad leading to a landing page. One way to get more attention to the ad is to have it scroll down the page as your reader continues to read your content.
If you’re technically minded, you can also follow this tutorial for adding a Scrolling Sidebar to your WordPress site. (Note: The tutorial is old but still works great.)
8. Launch a Dedicated Landing Page
A dedicated landing page for email marketing can lift your conversion rate and help with email lead generation.
Create an optimized landing page for email leads and subscriptions. To make it a high-converting one, you can apply the following tips:
Offer something appealing that will attract visitors.
Design it beautifully with contrasting colors and placement.
Include reviews or social proofs to gain trust.
Adorn it with images or insights that will attract attention.
Make the subscribe button noticeable. Try a colorful button like red, green, or blue.
Example: Adam Connell of Blogging Wizard designed a beautiful landing page with an appealing offer, colors, images, and associations.
There are plenty of landing page plugins to choose from. Here are a few of my favorite ones and what’s so great about them:
Leadpages: If you’re looking for an easy way to create and manage multiple landing pages, sales pages, and webinar registration pages, then Leadpages is the tool.
Unbounce: This popular app gives you the power to create, publish, and optimize landing pages without doing development. Unbounce has a heavy emphasis on customization.
Instapage: The Instapage platform enables you to get started with a professional-looking landing page without breaking the bank.
Pagewiz: This all-in-one landing page tool helps you get professional landing pages up and running in no time. As with the other tools, you don’t need design or programming experience to get started.
If you’re stuck on what to create, many of the above plugins have templates. You can also take inspiration from your favorite bloggers and e-commerce sites.
9. Position a Subscribe Box at the End of Your Content
This method is similar to the first one, “Present a Pop-up at the End of Your Content.” The only difference is that the subscribe box won’t pop up. It will stay in place as a normal subscribe box right underneath the content.
If you think that pop-ups at the end of your content will annoy people, here is the solution. Set up a regular subscribe box at the bottom of your content. It will serve the same purpose, but it won’t grab as much attention as a pop-up.
Example: Copyblogger has one under all of their blog posts.
If you’re in the market for a subscription box plugin, consider AWeber Webform Widget. This plugin allows you to install an AWeber web form on your WordPress blog and prompts visitors to subscribe to your list when commenting or registering on your blog.
10. Submit a Survey
Surveys are great for gathering insights or votes from users. But with a few tweaks, a survey becomes a powerful weapon in email lead generation.
For instance, Qualaroo is an insight marketing tool. It has an interesting feature to generate an email leads list through a survey. What I like about it is that the method is unique.
You can set up a survey subscribe form using Qualaroo or a similar tool. The form should remain in the screen’s bottom corner and will undoubtedly increase your conversion rate.
Selection, Timing, and Behavior
While many of the plugins we recommended above are unobtrusive, you still want to consider your website visitors’ experience. Are your requests for email leads annoying? Are they taking away from the overall experience?
To answer that, consider these three points: selection, timing, and behavior.
Let’s discuss what each of those means.
First up is selection.
How can you select which method will work for you? There are no straightforward recommendations because all websites are not the same. So, here are some best practices:
A good rule of thumb here is to determine how long visitors tend to spend on a particular webpage and then create a pop-up that displays at the 50 to 60 percent point.
So, if visitors tend to stay on your homepage for 90 seconds, then aim to have the pop-up appear within 45 seconds to 54 seconds.
Now that you’ve got selection and timing worked out, it’s time to consider behavior. In other words, how do your pop-ups and other email lead plugins work?
Why should you control the behavior? Here are the reasons:
To stop annoying visitors.
To stop people from leaving your site.
To stop losing conversions.
To prevent showing subscription messaging to the same person again and again, you should use cache. You can set the cache to 15 to 30 days, so the visitors who see the messages once won’t see them again in the same period. Of course, standard forms that don’t annoy anyone, such as the sidebar, home gate, top bar, and so forth, can appear all the time.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do you have more questions about how to generate email leads without harming the user experience? Here are answers to some of the most common questions on the topic.
How much does an email lead cost?
The average cost per lead varies by industry and lead generation method. For example, a lead for a marketing agency can be as low as $22 or as high as $173. Within retail, that cost range is much smaller, with a low of $25 and a high of $41.
How can I get free email leads?
The best way to collect free email leads is with an email newsletter subscription box on your website. With the right conversion techniques, you can get users to subscribe to your newsletter with just a few clicks. You can also sweeten the deal by offering a free download, such as an eBook or e-course.
What are the 3 ways to generate leads?
There are three main ways to generate leads: search engines, content marketing, and social media. Using search engines and social media, you can create campaigns that drive users to your website or even allow them to sign up directly within the campaign—for example, a newsletter sign-up campaign on Facebook. Using content marketing, you can entice visitors to your website or via guest posts to subscribe to your newsletter.
Conclusion
List building is a game of understanding your audience and looking for opportunities to capture email leads.
My suggestion is to choose some of these methods wisely, according to the tastes of your users. Also, be sure to test the methods you decide to try.
While focusing on list building, though, you should also consider the user experience. That’s where our tips on selection, timing, and behavior come into play.
Do you have any questions about lead building? How about any tips? Leave them in the comments below.
About The Author: Abrar Mohi Shafee is a digital marketer and blogger by passion. He is determined to guide people on “how to blog in an artistic way.” Follow him on Twitter @shafee219.
Artificial intelligence (AI) has revolutionized the world of art and creativity, with an AI painting generator being one of the latest exciting advancements.
These AI tools allow artists and creatives to create unique and compelling paintings with ease. So in this article, we will explore the best tools for AI painting and how they are transforming the world of art.
OpenArt is a platform dedicated to AI art enthusiasts. It is a startup based in San Francisco that was founded by ex-Googlers. The platform is in a constant state of evolution, with rapid development being a key focus.
The Discovery section of the platform allows users to directly upload their images. The search results may include images gathered from the internet.
OpenArt encourages community engagement and offers a Discord server for users to join. This serves as a platform for direct interaction with the founders themselves. The team is always seeking individuals who are interested in contributing and welcomes anyone who wishes to help out.
Key features:
AI-powered generation of unique and visually compelling artwork.
Customization options for color palette, brush strokes, textures, and composition.
Style transfer capabilities for applying famous artwork styles to generated paintings.
Iterative refinement process for fine-tuning and adjusting results.
Focus on producing high-quality outputs resembling traditional paintings.
User-friendly interface with intuitive controls and real-time previews.
Collaboration and sharing options within the community.
Hotpot’s AI image generator empowers you to turn your imagination into art. With the transformative capabilities of AI, users can simply input a few words and witness Hotpot magically transform the text into an incredible artwork.
Utilizing advanced algorithms such as deep learning and generative models, Hotpot analyzes the user’s input, comprehending the essence of their words, and then translates them into visually captivating compositions. The resulting art pieces embody a harmonious fusion of human imagination and machine intelligence, showcasing the immense potential of AI in the creative realm.
Key features:
Translates textual input into visually captivating artwork.
Rapid generation of high-quality art, illustrations, and images.
Versatile range of artistic styles to explore.
Customization options for color, texture, and composition.
Detailed and realistic rendering of textures and patterns.
Supports iterative refinement for creative experimentation.
User-friendly interface with intuitive controls.
Facilitates collaboration and community engagement.
If you want to tap into your artistic side, look no further than Cutout Pro’s AI Painting Generator. This exceptional tool is designed to be the ideal starting point for your artistic exploration. With its user-friendly interface and intuitive tools, it ensures that everyone can participate and create stunning, one-of-a-kind artwork, regardless of their artistic experience or skill level.
Cutout Pro’s AI Painting Generator opens up a world of possibilities for expressing your creativity. It offers a seamless and accessible experience, guiding you through the process of generating unique and original art pieces. Whether you’re a seasoned artist or just starting your artistic journey, this tool empowers you to bring your artistic visions to life in a way that is sure to leave a lasting impression.
Starry AI is a remarkable AI painting generator app that effortlessly transforms your text prompts into stunning works of art. Unlike traditional methods of art generation that typically involve complex technical processes, starryai simplifies and streamlines the entire experience, making it accessible to all, regardless of technical expertise.
The app’s intuitive interface and user-friendly design ensure that anyone can embark on an artistic adventure with ease and confidence.
Key features:
Transforms text prompts into stunning artworks effortlessly.
Easily create stunning and unique artwork with Artimator, powered by Stable Diffusion and DALL-E artificial intelligence. Whether you provide a text description or an image, this tool brings your artistic vision to life effortlessly. Enjoy unlimited possibilities by generating multiple artworks based on the same text description. If you’re unsatisfied with the initial result, generate again with the same description or provide additional clarifications for different outcomes.
Say goodbye to searching for free images or purchasing them from stock platforms. Artimator saves you time and money by providing original artwork tailored to your specifications. You also retain full rights to your AI art, granting you creative ownership and freedom.
Key features:
Powered by Stable Diffusion and DALL-E AI.
Accepts text or image input for artwork creation.
Unlimited generation based on the same text.
Variation and customization options available.
Saves time and money by eliminating image searches and purchases.
Full rights and ownership of the AI-generated artwork.
What other types of art can you create with AI?
AI has demonstrated its ability to create various types of art across different mediums. Some examples of art forms that can be created with AI include:
AI music generators: AI algorithms can generate original musical compositions in different genres and styles, composing melodies, harmonies, and even entire symphonies.
AI story generators: AI can generate poetry, stories, and even novels by analyzing patterns and structures in existing literature, producing unique written works.
AI video generators: AI can assist in video editing, special effects, and even generate entirely new video content, such as deepfake technology that seamlessly alters or replaces faces in videos.
AI drawings: AI algorithms can generate intricate and visually stunning drawings, exploring various styles, subjects, and artistic techniques.
AI portraits: AI can create lifelike and expressive portraits, capturing the essence and characteristics of individuals or subjects, often achieving a striking level of realism.
AI faces:AI can generate highly detailed and realistic human faces, often indistinguishable from actual photographs, allowing for the creation of virtual characters, avatars, or realistic simulations.
AI voices:AI technology can synthesize human-like voices, enabling the generation of speech, narration, or even impersonations. This has applications in voice-over work, audiobook production, and voice synthesis for characters in video games or animations.
AI photos: AI algorithms can generate realistic and high-quality photographs, including landscapes, cityscapes, still life, and more. These AI-generated photos can capture unique perspectives, apply artistic filters, or combine elements from multiple images.
These are just a few examples of AI being utilized to create art in various forms. As AI continues to advance, it presents exciting opportunities for artists and creatives to explore new dimensions and push the boundaries of artistic expression.
Final thoughts
AI-powered painting tools are transforming the way we create art, making it easier than ever to create unique and compelling paintings.
Whether you’re a professional artist or just looking to create art as a hobby, these tools offer a range of options and styles to choose from. As AI technology continues to advance, we can expect to see even more innovative tools and applications emerge in the world of art.
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