Marketers insist that lead marketing is a thing of the past, that email capturing through popups is dead. More often than not, you’ll hear them complaining that they can’t capture leads, that they can’t get people interested, that people find popups annoying. How do they hook visitors if people won’t bite the bait?
What if I tell you the problem lies in the marketer and not the method? What if I tell you that I found a great way?
Lead marketing and lead captures still do work, but only when you do it right.
Welcome to my Poptin review and let me explain why this software is what you need to boost your lead capturing!
Choosing a Lead Capture Software: What’s Important?
What do I mean when I say ‘lead capture’?
Lead capture (or lead magnet tools or email capture tools) exist to help you convert your website visitors to leads; leads that you can work on developing and nurturing relationships with.
You will often hear marketers despairing that popups are a thing of the past; it’s something we used to do back in 2012. They complain that they cannot convert or capture people. How can you build relationships if you cannot get them interested to begin with?
Let me tell you a harsh truth: it is because your offer is not good enough. It is because your timing was bad. It is because you did not target the right people.
Lead marketing is all about getting the right people, at the right time, in the right way.
Marketers tend to show popups at the wrong time and that can end up disturbing the user’s experience. Good luck trying to convert a customer when their first impression of you is negative. You cannot blame that mistake- a human mistake- on a popup, now can you?
What did I do? I wait for the right time to send them an offer; I wait for them to click, read or make an offer first. I give them agency, let them take the initiative, and that is a definite way for me to receive interested leads. You can only build a list by asking, of course, but you need to make sure you do it at the right time.
But look no further! I bring you this comprehensive checklist of absolute must-haves:
My criteria
- Getting started: Is it easy to use and set up?
- Customization: Is it easy to change colors, fonts, and sizes?
- Mobile: Does this look good on a mobile version? Many popup apps tend to look good on desktop websites but not on mobile phones.
- User-behavior technology: Does this lead capture tool have the following technologies:
- Exit intent technology for the right triggers
- Scroll-based & time-based technology to trigger at the right time
- Page triggers
- Targeting: Can you target certain pop-ups by source, time & date, new vs returning users, and how often can you show these pop-ups? Does it have advanced targeting tools, such as:
- Target by traffic source (search engines, social networks, etc.)
- Target by specified dates and time of day
- Show on specific website pages
- Show to new or returning visitors
- Control frequency of display to each visitor
- Templates: Do they have ready-made templates?
- Email Capture options: How many different types of popups do they have? For example:
- Lightbox
- Top and bottom bars
- Poptins specially designed for mobile
- Full-screen Poptins
- Slide-In
- A/B Testing: Marketing isn’t efficient if it is not A/B tested. Marketers need to know which popup, copy, images and messaging are working better.
- Email validation: Does it help you validate the emails?
- Auto-responder: Does it have an autoresponder?
- Analytics: Does it have analytics to evaluate conversions? You should be able to analyze and understand how different popups are performing based on different pages, triggers and more. A popup app without analytics is incomplete.
- Subtle features: Does it have Inline forms to offer subtle content within your blogs?
- Integrations: Does it have integrations with most of the email marketing tools?
Why Poptin?
I’ve been using Poptin for the past year and let me honestly tell you, I am a huge fan. It has all the features you can think of and is fit to be an enterprise software. Poptin has brought me a lot of conversions, even during periods of inactivity.
Poptin has also been very clever in the way they market themselves. They have a parrot mascot and I personally love it. It has a personality and gives the creative side of the blog or website. Not to mention that it’s great for brand awareness.
In the example above, Poptin shows it on exit intent, and uses the fear approach to make me sign up. The barrier to signing up is so low because it takes hardly two minutes. The parrot mascot flies all the time, so it does get the attention.
But I won’t spoil too much right now, let’s dissect it and get into the review.
The Good
Poptin is my favorite tool among all because it solves more problems than any other, and does not cost an arm and a leg. It’s actually free to get started.
- It has a great interface and is completely customizable. Non-programmers and eCommerce marketers will find it the easiest to use.
- Regardless of your package being free or paid, they provide a live chat with excellent customer support.
- It starts free and then is just $19/month. A truly gold software for cheap pricing!
- Poptin does not limit you with the number of days; everyone can start for free and scale with time. It ends up being quite cost-effective.
It has a lot of design templates and wide range of variety than most of its competitors
- More elements (timer, shapes, icons, video)
- Separate desktop and mobile editing
- Full view editing
- Background editing
- Display rules summary
- Autoresponder templates
- Agency interface update
It has the best support amongst all tools. They are world-class in terms of helping you set up.
It has really great email reporting, analytics and statistics; all the information you need to really develop your offer and enrich it.
This feature is great for multitasking. Say you have multiple websites and you need a cohesive report on how they are doing. Poptin gives you all the data without you even having to ask for it. I personally do not even need Google Analytics anymore because Poptin fulfils all my needs. I use Poptin embeddable posts and it works like a dream.
It has a clickable popup: Poptin Click! I can wait for the user to click on the elements.
This feature is also incredibly customizable. I use it quite frequently and I have often seen a large amount of conversion without me even having to actively promote it! Two thumbs up!
It has A/B testing and Inline forms (I personally have been using the following template and it works pretty well).
It has an auto-responder (I love it). This saves me time to connect with other email tool, and only passes verified leads.
It has location-based and device triggering, which useful if you are targeting many locations & languages.
More on that, it has 40+ integrations like:
- MailChimp Integration
- Constant Contact Integration
- iContact Integration
- Hubspot Integration
- Nutshell Integration
- Zapier Integration
I have nothing but good things to say about Poptin so we’re just going to skip the ‘the bad’ section this once!
The Final Verdict
Poptin is undoubtedly the best lead marketing software out there, with advanced features at the lowest price. Its easy-to-use interface makes it a breeze for new users to get familiar and feel at home quickly.
And who can deny their parrot mascot?
If your offer is right and your content is right, people who want to take advantage of it will definitely avail it.
Have you been convinced?
If yes, try ? Poptin out (it’s free)