How to Increase Traffic Conversion with Email Capture (Plus 5 Hidden Benefits of Building your Email List)

— February 10, 2017

Driving traffic to your website is a key part of growing your business. You must get people to your site to see what products or services you offer in order to have the opportunity of a sale. However, this is just one piece of the puzzle. How do you get more sales opportunities without investing more resources in driving traffic? How do you gain more control over your sales and marketing?


If you’re reading this, you’ve already taken a valuable step in focusing on traffic conversion. While conversions are often directly associated with a sale, we’re going to take a look at how email capture can fuel your sales funnel and ultimately drive a higher number of transactions consistently.


Why Every Conversion Matters


On average, 98% of traffic coming to your website will not convert into a lead or sale. There are definitely cases where a new visitor will purchase during their very first visit, but these don’t occur too often. The reality is that you’re going to have to work for the majority of your sales by and this starts with capturing an email in order to directly reach your consumers.


You need to acknowledge is that your traffic conversion rate can be improved and even a slight improvement in traffic conversion can make a big impact in revenue down the line. Don’t get complaisant. Always look for more opportunities to better convert your traffic.


Before we go any further, here are a few questions to consider:



  • How are you engaging with the 98% of traffic that doesn’t convert?
  • Are you acquiring contact information for future reach out?
  • Are you providing conversion opportunities outside of completing a purchase?

The purpose of these questions is to provide a benchmark for what you currently are doing to convert traffic before purchase. This will help you identify new strategies and tactics to implement into your marketing strategy.


Fuel Your Funnel with Email Capture


Why Focus on Getting Email?


An email opt-in is the most valuable conversion aside from an actual sales conversion. Email remains the most effective marketing channel for driving sales and also opens you up to a variety of marketing opportunities. Here are the benefits of getting an email:



  • Increased traffic conversion
  • Identify the visitor and can now view them as a lead
  • Directly market to leads via email marketing
  • Trigger automated email campaigns
  • Fuel Facebook ad campaigns (custom audiences and lookalike audiences)
  • Trigger cart abandonment campaigns (for e-commerce)

Identifying your visitors and establishing a channel of communication will allow your business to market more effectively over time while building a larger list of consumers.


Capturing an email isn’t always easy. Some visitors will immediately see value in what your business and your newsletter offer. Others will need some convincing.


Top of the Funnel Conversions for Email List Growth


Here’s a list of top of the funnel conversions. While all of the conversions listed involve acquiring an email, it’s important to look at them separately because the follow up marketing campaigns may differ from each other.


For example, you may send a blog subscriber a series of your top posts while sending a contest participant details on the contest along with an enticing promo code.



  • Newsletter Sign Up
  • Blog Subscription
  • Gated Content Download
  • Contest Entry
  • Email Opt-in for Free Shipping
  • Email Opt-In for a discount

Note: Some businesses are hesitant to run incentivized email capture promotions because they don’t want to discount products or services. While an incentive for a discount does convert at a high percentage, don’t feel the need to discount if it does not align with your brand or your product/service margins. There are plenty of other options for incentivizing visitors to join your email list.


3 Effective Tools for Email Capture


Email Pop Ups


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When it comes to increasing traffic conversion and building your email list, there’s no better tool to use than email pop ups. This is the most effective way to engage visitors and put your email capture form directly in front of them. You can drastically increase conversion rates by simply prompting visitors with a decision to make.


To increase the effectiveness of your pop ups, you must focus on design. While email pop ups alone will work pretty well, spending some extra time on design will make your offering much more appealling. The goal here is to get away from the generic email pop up and create your own unique email pop up to drive more engagement. Need some ideas? Check out these email pop up designs for inspiration!


Sign Up Bars


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Sign up bars make sense for some businesses and some marketers prefer this option because it is less intrusive to the website experience. BUT…they are nowhere near as effective as an email pop up. The intrusive nature of email pop ups is what makes them so effective! It’s called pattern interruption (more info here).


Back to sign up bars. There are times and places to use a sign up bar for email capture. For example, there may be a page where obstructing the content at the center of the page is not ideal. It could be a video or animated graphic. In this case, consider using a sign up bar. Another good example would be on mobile. The mobile experience is different and sign up bars may be more suitable. Here’s an excellent example for mobile.


Exit Pop Ups


exit_pop_up_offer.png


Last, but certainly not least, we must discuss exit pop ups. As mentioned earlier, the vast majority of your traffic will not convert into a lead or sale. However, there are things that we can do to convert more of these visitors. Exit pop ups are your last chance at converting a visitor into an email subscriber and they are incredibly effective at the task at hand.


When a visitor attempts to leave your website, an exit pop up will appear to convert that visitor before they leave. The internet is huge and full of distractions so don’t aimlessly let your visitors leave. Make an attempt to keep them on your site or capture their email before they go watch cat videos. Here are a few tips for creating a high converting exit pop up.

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Author: Grant Thomas


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