Call them email popups, opt-in popup forms, or email capture popups, but they work wonders! Email popups are a great way to build your email list and use email marketing to drive sales, build customer relationships, and launch new products.
If done right, email popups will turn your website visitors into revenue and, eventually, loyal customers.
But not all email popups attract these positive results. Those poorly executed contain many salesy words, use illegible fonts and texts, and pop on the screen every few seconds. This invokes a bothersome, annoying sales tactic that only pushes potential prospects away.
Remember, increasing site traffic and conversion rates is one of the major challenges for ecommerce directors.
You want to overcome this challenge by creating popups that target the right audience, provide the best incentives, and convert your visitors into potential leads to build your online store.
So, how do you create the best email popup?
- Work on its visuals: Choose an interesting design and beautiful imagery to capture your visitor’s attention.
- Make it personal: Personalize your email popup to reflect your brand and target audience, so they can relate to it and feel that the emails are created especially for them.
- Consider the user’s experience: Ensure the email popups are equally effective on mobile devices as on desktops.
- Legibility is key: Use fonts and text that are captivating and easy to read.
If you’re new to email collection modals or want to revisit your approach, here are 5 real and excellent examples of email popups with high conversion rates to get you started.
1 – Offer Free Shipping
If there’s an opportunity to save money from online shopping—no matter how small—most shoppers will grab it.
Providing free shipping for first-time shoppers is an excellent way of enticing them to make a purchase.
Outdoor Research understands this and has made free shipping their lead magnet. The fashion store shows this email popup as a welcome sign to visitors a couple of seconds after landing on the site.
Study upon study has proven the tremendous benefits ecommerce stores enjoy by offering free shipping.
These benefits include:
- Improving sales conversion: Many online shoppers cite shipping charges as their primary reason for cart abandonment.
- Increasing customer loyalty: Free or discounted shipping can greatly boost customer loyalty and improve the store’s sustainability.
- Gaining competitive advantage: Free shipping gives your ecommerce store a competitive edge by making it stand out from the rest.
Besides the free shipping benefits shoppers receive, Outdoor Research has made the popup as simple as possible.
There are no major distractions to steal the visitor’s attention from its main purpose—adding their email address and activating the offer.
The white background and black texts provide a great contrast for legibility. Its “no thanks” button is also visible and clear, making it simple for visitors to “deny” the offer and proceed to browse through the site.
2 – A Simple Design
Here’s another ecommerce brand that uses free shipping as an incentive.
Skwala, a company specializing in making thoughtful, comfortable fishing gear, displays this entry popup to visitors a few seconds after landing on their site.
Skwala’s popup is a perfect example of how email popups don’t have to be overwhelming to be effective. It takes up only a tiny fraction of the page and uses fonts and texts that aren’t overly distracting.
The design is distinct, clean, and simple; a classic black and white that increases the prominence of the free shipping and call-to-action (CTA). This helps the store send its message without being too “loud,” just as website users like it.
Most importantly, the free shipping popup is an excellent incentive for visitors to join Skwala’s email list.
Several ecommerce stores offer free shipping to first-time customers after they hit a certain target, normally a minimum order value. But offering free shipping specifically to email subscribers, like Skwala, gives potential customers a reason to receive your emails.
3 – Offer a Sitewide Discount
Email popups are an effective way to inform your site visitors about any ongoing sales or offers on your products and services.
West Paw understands that providing discounts will make their visitors and followers more likely to purchase their products.
Instead of providing free shipping or discounts for first-time buyers, the pet store offers a site-wide discount appreciated by all.
Apart from West Paw’s discount offer, its popup image clearly makes it a great marketing strategy. The “dog holding a toy in its mouth” image showcases their product and uses it to attract their ideal audience.
Every dog owner enjoys seeing their dog happy and enjoying the summer sun, playing by the pool with its favorite toy. This is a great marketing strategy that West Paw uses to drive sales.
The design is also simple but colorful, giving it the playful nature it embodies as a toy shop for dogs.
Expert Tip: The best way to get buyers to return to your ecommerce store is by offering something new and interesting. Large retailers, like Alibaba and Amazon, have daily deals and special offers for events such as Halloween, Christmas, and other holidays.
Ecommerce email popups enable you to do the same; for instance, by creating specific messages and offers for special days. This will excite your customers and keep them returning to find out which offers are in store for them today.
4 – Build a Loyal Community
If you want to grow your ecommerce store through email marketing, you’ll need several subscribers on your email list. Alerting them of sales, discounts, and new products will bring them back to your page, eventually increasing your site’s traffic.
But when you want to go down this road, ensure you use a high-converting popup, just like Oboz Footwear.
Oboz understands that even though lead magnets help with conversions, you don’t need them to attain good results.
Instead of offering free shipping or discounts, the brand focuses on building loyalty and inclusivity among their subscribers, whom they call “Oboz insiders.”
The brand promises its subscribers that they’ll be the first to know about any new product releases, updates, and community news.
What makes this email popup so effective is its promise of inclusivity. Instead of giving their customers something of value upfront, Oboz appeals to the human desire of belonging to a community.
5 – Make Your Messaging Clear
Your email popups don’t have to be boring and generic. Get creative and add a fun twist to your headlines, as Swedish Linens has done.
What we love most about this popup is how short and precise it is. The brand has only used 4 words to create a quirky, eye-catching headline…no additional captions or subheadings.
Swedish Lines has also made the popup texts as simple as possible. The only other headline shown is on the call-to-action button, the placeholder text, and the disclaimer.
The brand conveys a strong message that you don’t need many words to convince people to subscribe to your email list. A 20% discount is already a great bargain and doesn’t need much more convincing to draw people in.
Popup Examples and How They Work
The table below shows the different types of email popups that you can use for your ecommerce store, and how they work.
Boosting Your Ecommerce Store With Email Popups: Key Takeaways
Email popups will do more for your ecommerce store than earn you more subscribers. They have the potential to make your website more successful, effective, and helpful.
If you want to create an effective email popup with high conversion rates for your site, the examples we’ve discussed above will help you get started.
In summary:
- Create an email list to get repeat visitors.
- Guide your customers and help them find what they’re seeking.
- Request feedback to improve your business and customer service.
- Inform your customers of discounts, sales, and new products.
- Keep your popup design clean, simple, and eye-catching.
- Write an enticing copy on your email popup.
It’s all about thinking of your target audience’s needs and how your email popups can help. Make the popups helpful and relevant, so rather than interrupting or annoying your site visitors, they’ll actually improve and enrich your site’s user experience.