If you were building your dream house, you wouldn’t start digging the foundation or raising the walls with just your hands.
You might use a shovel and a hammer. Some nails. In other words, you’d use tools.
When you’re building your email lists, there’s no such thing as too much help. Email capture is hard. It’s not just an email address you are trying to collect, but a customer you are trying to connect with.
And to build a structurally sound list–one that will actually want to engage with you–you need more than just your brilliant marketing mind.
You need the right tools in your toolbox.
Knowing the best ways to do email capture is only part of the equation. You can’t follow best practices without the tools to get them done.
You can’t build that dream house without the proper tools. The same logic applies to building your dream email list.
Email capture is about to get easier. Because you’re about to learn:
- The best email capture software tools – we know the top seven!
- Why you should even be doing email marketing (this should be a no-brainer, but it’s that important)
- The leading ways to grow your email list using those tools (and a few examples to inspire you)
- The biggest mistake you can make with email capture that will undo all your hard work
When you’re done reading, you’ll have a complete email capture toolkit.
Now, let’s go capture some emails.
Like this. This box is capturing emails.
What tools will help you capture emails?
The first step to email capture is having technology that lets you do it in the first place. The right tools will help you set up the best methods to gather emails. Some tools–or lead magnets–include:
- Landing page sign-up forms
- Floating bars
- Pop-up forms – overlays and slide-ins and stickies, oh my!
You have a lot of options, but here are the 6 most popular lead generation software tools:
- OptinMonster
- SumoMe
- PopupSmart
- SureTrigger
- Sleeknote
- Bloom
- Gravity Forms
1. OptinMonster
Have you thought about and then disregarded the idea of a pop-up faster than one would actually appear? I don’t blame you.
They can be really annoying. However, pop-ups can also work really well for email capture, and OptinMonster is a great tool for building them.
OptinMonster has advanced targeting features, the ability to animate pop-ups and slide-ins, and a variety of pre-loaded, customizable themes.
Don’t want to use those? You can also build your own from scratch with Custom HTML and CSS, and A/B test your different forms.
Click here to learn about easily integrating the OptinMonster app with your ActiveCampaign account.
2. SumoMe
SumoMe offers multiple tools as part of its brand, and it has a couple of ways to help you with email growth by way of list building and header bar sign-up forms. Smart Bar by SumoMe lets you add scrolling header bars to your website.
Top-of-the-fold forms are hard to ignore. They are even harder to ignore when they follow your scroll. Not only is it a free tool, but it also works on any website (including mobile-optimized ones).
To keep the sign-up form building easier still, there’s List Builder by SumoMe as well. List Builder lets you do basic customization of your pop-ups, including:
- Text
- Font
- Colors
List Builder by SumoMe is the easiest and fastest way to double your daily email signups (which might explain why 50,000+ sites use it).
Click here to learn about easily integrating the SumoMe app with your ActiveCampaign account.
3. Popupsmart
Popupsmart is a no-code pop-up builder where you can create appealing pop-ups in minutes to capture emails effectively.
With different types of pop-ups and business goals that help you collect leads and increase sales, Popupsmart offers conversion-ready solutions while helping your user engagement at the same time.
And the best part is?
It is possible to use Popupsmart on your every page without hesitation because it will not harm your website speed or performance in any case.
So, yes! Your UX will remain the same!
Learn more about the PopupSmart and ActiveCampaign integration here.
4. SureTriggers
SureTriggers can be a powerful email capture and automation solution for marketers. It allows marketers to harvest email addresses straight from their website and automate future email campaigns by connecting with WordPress forms and popular email marketing platforms.
Marketers can create processes that automatically add email addresses gathered through forms to their email lists and trigger personalized follow-up emails, nurturing leads and boosting engagement.
This simplifies the lead generation process and enables marketers to automate their email marketing operations, saving time and enhancing the efficiency of their overall marketing strategy.
To know more about SureTriggers and ActiveCampaign click here.
5. SleekNote
Sleeknote is a lead generation tool that makes adding pop-ups and slide-ins to your website easy. Their simple visual pop-up builder is one of the best available, and you can create customized designs to match your brand.
SleekNote doesn’t just stop at the pop-ups. You can also easily target when and where you want them to appear with their targeting features. And you can see what pop-ups are working well with recently-launched A/B testing.
Click here to learn about easily integrating the SleekNote app with your ActiveCampaign account.
6. Bloom
Inline Opt-In Forms by Bloom can be a real asset to your lead generation efforts. Wherever you want to add a pre-designed subscribe form on your website, Bloom can help you do it.
You can display opt-in forms at the bottom of your page content while also placing inline opt-in forms with shortcodes anywhere within your website’s content. Plus, there’s no limit to how many opt-in forms you can create.
Need a form for a blog post? Maybe on your homepage or About page?
Bloom has built-in templates and easy editing to make it happen.
Click here to learn about easily integrating the Bloom app with your ActiveCampaign account.
7. Gravity Forms
Gravity Forms is a premier WordPress plugin that makes it easy to build powerful forms on the fly. As far as form-building apps go, this is one of the most advanced for websites that run on WordPress. What we love about it is how easily it works with the ActiveCampaign platform.
Just a few clicks will let you:
- Send new contacts acquired from forms directly into ActiveCampaign.
- Set submissions to trigger different ActiveCampaign functions like automations, tagging, and sending follow-up emails.
Click here to learn about easily integrating the Gravity Forms app with your ActiveCampaign account.
Why even bother with email capture?
Well, that’s a silly question. But, amazingly, it still gets asked.
Email capture is important because carrier pigeons are just such a pain to deal with.
No, actually email capture and email marketing are important because it is one of the cheapest, easiest ways to connect and stay engaged with customers and boost revenue.
To get good email ROI, you need email marketing. To be able to do email marketing, you need email lists. To have email lists, you need email capture.
And, even though there are still unopened and unengaged email campaigns out there, listen to this:
- 91% of adults in the US like to get promotional emails from businesses they like.
- Despite social media’s large audience, email is almost 40 times more effective than Facebook and Twitter combined when it comes to getting new customers.
are some non-numerical reasons why you need to prioritize email marketing.
1. You can create an experience, not just a click
It’s important to create the best subject lines and a good email design, but think beyond the click goal.
Email marketing lets you create an entire user experience from landing on a product page to subscribing to a blog. Don’t get stuck on just one email capture form. Think about the journey connected to your prospective customer.
2. Targeting people with the right messages builds a stronger customer list
All the email marketing in the world doesn’t matter if you are sending them to people who don’t matter. Targeted email marketing lets you connect with people who want to hear from you among those you capture who turn out not to be interested.
3. Anyone can do it
Pretty much everyone can (and should)– authors, content marketers, software developers, public speakers, consultants, digital marketers, information marketers, manufacturers, wholesalers, and retailers. It’s not industry–or business–specific.
So instead of asking “Why bother with email marketing?”, the better question to ask is “Why wouldn’t you use email marketing?”
But. none of these efforts will pay off if you make one big (and common) mistake.
The one big mistake to avoid with email capture
Picture it: Your well-designed sign-up forms have convinced people to give you their emails and subscribe. They’re opening your emails and loving them! They’re reading your content and clicking through to your site.
It’s a new adventure!
They arrive on your site, ready to soak up even more, only to return and see…the very same form they already used to subscribe the first time asking them to subscribe...again.
Subscriber: “Wait...what the what? But I already...Stop appearing!! Bye…*Unsubscribe*”
You: “What happened to my email list??”
What’s the one big mistake you just made?
Your email capture strategies aren’t being tailored to accommodate returning visitors.
In other words, you keep re-engaging with customers who have already signed up.
Imagine how you’d feel if you met someone, built a connection, exchanged contact info, and then the next time you saw them, they said: “It’s nice to meet you, want to exchange contact info?” Um, we already did…
This is what it looks like when an already subscribed customer comes back to your site and is greeted by the same form that they already filled out the first time. Talk about annoying (for them, and your email lists).
If you’re showing the same sign-up forms to all visitors (and over and over again to returners), you’re missing valuable opportunities to acquire more newsletter subscriptions or maybe even reach additional readers.
Once someone has subscribed to your email list, it’s important to make sure that they get content (and other opt-ins) that are relevant to their progress with you.
Don’t let all of that email capture effort go to waste.
One way to make sure they are properly engaged is to have an automation-ready for them to join once they’ve subscribed.
Depending on how they arrived at your form, there could be different automations tailored to taste, or they could all go into a welcome automation and be further segmented from there.
This automation could lead to relevant lead magnets or another email they might be interested in getting now that they have joined your subscriber universe.
Here’s the bottom line: Email capture goes beyond just that first form. It’s a constant Rubik's cube of delivering the right content and continuing to engage customers in the right (and not repetitive) way.
