Lead generation matters in online marketing. It matters a lot – especially if driving traffic to your website is expensive.
That’s because the overwhelming majority of visitors to your website – 97% is a widely cited figure – don’t convert on their first visit.
Lead generation is about kicking off some sort of relationship you can develop over time with that 97%. It needs to be a central part of your marketing strategy if you work in a sector like loans or gambling where traffic is expensive to acquire through PPC advertising or social media advertising.
If you’re not focused on turning traffic into leads, you’re throwing money and opportunities away!😱
Web push notification, exit intent pop-ups and promo bars are three brilliant ways for converting visitors into leads. In this blog, we’ll look at seven lead generation tactics using pop-ups of these types and how to use them well.
- Floating and Sticky Promo Bars for Lead Generation
- Lead Generation with Welcome Mats or Welcome Gates
- Site Lock Overlays for Lead Generation
- Generating Leads with Triggered Pop-Ups and Slide-Ins
- On-Click Pop-Ups and Overlays and Lead Gen
- Exit Intent Pop-Ups and Generating Leads
- Web Push Notifications for Lead Generation
But first, we’ll address the elephant in the room – the idea that everyone hates pop-ups and that they damage user experience. It’s just not true!
We all remember the bad old days of pop-up adverts. They would appear unsolicited and out of the blue, get in the way of the content, slow down your device and be impossible to get rid of.
You can still find plenty of bad pop-up advertising. But done well, pop-ups and related techniques – which include web push notifications, exit intent overlays and promo bars – can:
– Add value and enhance user experience 😁👍
– Push website conversion rates up: the average pop-up conversion rate is 3.09% 🧡👍
– Turn traffic into warm leads at a low cost 💲👍
The Three Winning Characteristics of Good Pop-Ups
Web push notifications, exit intent pop-ups, triggered or automatic promo bars… they all aim to distract or interrupt the user from doing something else and into clicking.
That interruption can be annoying.
So a good pop-up has to counteract the annoyance with these three qualities:
- Value – If you interrupt a visitor, you’d better have a good reason. Your pop-ups and push messages need to provide something of value that justifies the distraction. That value can be anything – a discount, a bonus, free content etc.
- Context – The closer the message you present in your pop-ups is to the content the visitor was looking at before you interrupted them, the more open to that message they are likely to be. In-context ads can be very powerful. Out-of-context ads are very irritating.
- Brevity – You have only a split second to convince your visitors that the interruption is worthwhile. So the message you put across must be very explicit and easy to understand immediately. Make one point only, and make it loud and clear. And ask for as little information as possible – only ask for what you absolutely need.
When creating lead generation content, you need to bear all these qualities in mind, as well as the specific tactic you use.
1. Floating and Sticky Promo Bars for Lead Generation
Floating promo bars appear at the top or bottom of the user’s browser window and remain on the screen wherever they scroll to on that page. Floating promo bars are also sometimes called sticky promo bars ¯_(ツ)_/¯ …
They can be static and appear on load, or they can slide in or pop up at pre-defined trigger points.
The point about floating promo bars is they are the least interruptive kind of lead generation form we are going to look at. They don’t get in the way of the user viewing anything else that is on their screen.
🤩TOP TIP: Combine your floating lead generation promo bar with a special offer to improve conversion, like this:
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2. Lead Generation with Welcome Mats or Welcome Gates
Another popular kind of promo bar is the so-called “welcome mat” or “welcome gate” overlay. This appears as soon as a new visitor lands on your site and invites them to take an action before proceeding.
Welcome mats can take up the whole screen, they can be overlaid with the main content behind greyed out or they can be inserted into the browser window – as in the example from Wikipedia above.
For first time visitors, promo bars of this sort are unlikely to be effective for lead generation. You’ve never met this person before and yet the first thing you’re doing is STOPPING them from looking at the page they’ve browsed to by asking for their details!
But welcome mats can be a great lead generation tool when it comes to repeat visitors. If a user knows what to expect from your site, an early CTA with a strong value proposition can win them over on arrival.
🤩TOP TIP: This applies to all pop-ups, but especially ones like welcome mats that bring the whole website experience to a halt. MAKE IT EASY AND OBVIOUS HOW TO CLOSE IT! Otherwise, your hard-visitor is likely to just close the browser tab to get away.
3. Site Lock Overlays for Lead Generation
A more extreme version of the welcome mat is a site lock pop-up or overlay. This effectively stops a visitor from doing ANYTHING until they’ve completed a required action.
Site locks are common on websites that offer age-restricted products and services, like financial services, gambling and this:
They are also used by many publishers, to restrict access to premium content to logged-in subscribers.
🤩TOP TIP: Although a site lock is likely to drive visitors away when used too early, it can be perfect for lead generation after you have displayed a taster of valuable “lead magnet” content. Display the first few pages of your e-book or white paper for free, but when a user tries to click beyond that present a form to collect their details in exchange for the rest.
4. Generating Leads with Triggered Pop-Ups and Slide-Ins
Most service providers allow you to set when your promo bars and pop-ups will appear through their user interface rather than having them appear immediately on page load.
This is important for UX or user experience (and good user experience leads to better conversion) because a delay gives the visitor a chance to interact with their chosen content before you attempt to convert them to a lead with a distracting offer.
For example, this pop-up only appears once you have scrolled down around one third of the page (a “progress trigger”).
If you get that far, it suggests that you are fairly well-engaged with the content and see it as valuable . At that moment, Hubspot thinks you might well be willing to exchange your contact details for a relevant piece of downloadable content.
Other sites use a time trigger, making the pop-up appear after the user has been on the page for 30 seconds or more (depending on the nature of the content).
You can maximise the impact of your promo bars by tying the moment and way it appears to the psychological state your visitors will be in as a result of your content.
🤩TOP TIP: Having built up demand for your products or services in your copy (or video etc), a timely lead generation sign-up invitation (with an incentive – a discount, a voucher for future purchases etc 😊) can boost conversion significantly.
😎BONUS TIP: You can use progress and time triggers to remove your pop-ups as well. If your visitor doesn’t click on the promo bar for a long time (perhaps 10 seconds) or they scroll on without clicking, show that you get the message by making it disappear. It didn’t work this time, but you’ll have other chances!
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5. On-Click Pop-Ups and Overlays and Lead Generation
A less intrusive, more permission-based way of using pop-ups and overlays for lead generation is to use a click as the trigger.
The anchor for the pop-up can be inline text, an image (animated or static) or pretty much any other on-page element that entices the user to click. Having decided to click, the user is psychologically prepared for the next action – and so conversion rates on this kind of promo bar are often high.
🤩TOP TIP: One advantage of this kind of promo bar versus standard hyperlinks is that they don’t take the user away from the page they are on, so the user journey is less interrupted. Plus, javascript-powered pop-ups and overlays load much more quickly than full web pages.
6. Exit Intent Pop-Ups and Generating Leads
Exit intent pop-ups detect when a visitor is about to leave your website and present a last-ditch offer to stay and continue to engaged. They work like this:
You can be a lot pushier with an exit intent pop-up than other types of promo bar and overlay. The visitor is about to leave so what have you got to lose!? 😲
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That will usually mean offering an irresistible incentive to stay engaged – whether it’s on-site, on social media, via email or through other channels. Good examples include:
– A discount or free shipping on the first purchase for registration as a customer (ie provide your contact details).
– Downloadable premium content related to the pages the visitor has viewed.
– Email newsletter sign-up forms.
The precise offer can be tailored to the user’s behaviour on and off site by using tracking code. Map this and then tailor the triggered ads accordingly.
Well-executed exit intent pop-up strategies can make a big difference to your conversion rate. Some sites claim upwards of 300%, but a 5-10% boost is more usual.
🤩TOP TIP: Exit intent pop-ups give you a last chance to change a visitor’s mind. That means you need to be careful about when you DON’T show them:
– If a user has multiple browser tabs open with your website, ensure the pop-up only appears when they go to close the last one.
– Don’t show exit intent pop-ups to users who have already completed your conversion goals (eg already registered as a lead).
– Exit intent detection doesn’t work on mobile, as there is no mouse cursor to track. So make sure it’s deactivated on the mobile version of your site.
7. Web Push Notifications for Lead Generation
All the different promo bars and overlays we have looked at so far can only be displayed when a user is on your site.
What if there was a way you could present pop-ups to users who are not on your site?
Well, there is!
Web push notifications like the one below are pushed by the user’s browser. They can be served whenever you programme them for. So long as the user has their browser open, they will see the message.
Sounds too good to be true? Well, there is a catch. You can only serve web push notifications to opted-in users. Your site code will tell users’ browsers to display an opt-in prompt like the examples below:
You can customise your opt-in prompts, as shown here:
An interesting feature of web push notifications is that you don’t collect any personal data when a user opts-in to receive them. It’s just a matter of browser permissions.
That means you can only target them using web push messaging! If you want to drive them through a cross-channel lead nurturing funnel, you’ll need to get their other details. So use the web push notifications to direct them to a lead generation form.
🤩TOP TIP: Conversion rates vary widely by sector but they tend to work best for sites that visitors come to regularly. As you can see below, they are particularly effective for finance and gambling sites.
If you want to turn your site visitors into leads, you can’t ignore Web Push Notifications, Exit Intent Pop-Ups and Promo Bars. The numbers speak for themselves!
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Published with StoryChief