ZTG004 — Growing a Subscriber List: Exit-Intent vs. Slide-in Popups

Growing an email list is a priority for almost any marketer. Even though email marketing is effectively crashing down in flames, collecting emails is still valuable. If anything, a list of targeted emails allows you to build an audience baseline on most advertising platforms.

However you plan on using them, first things first: collecting these dang emails. Below, I report on an experiment I ran a couple months ago on the blog section of a website. It’s worth noting this blog already had decent monthly traffic (c. 10K/mo, if I remember correctly).

I had been running a slide-in popup at 75% page scroll for a long time now. I thought I’d set up an exit-intent popup instead and compare performances. So, important: the 6k-ish impressions for the control version represented in the results chart is from my original slide-in. I am not, in this experiment, running both at the same time.

Enough intro, onto the experiment card and the numbers.

Experiment name

ZTG004 — Acquisition — Blog — Slide in popup vs. Exit-intent popup

Objective

To compare the performance each style of popup. I want to understand the impact of running each separately, then potentially run both at the same time to see how that performs as well.

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Hypothesis

I predict that we will add twice as many new subscribers using the exit pop-up because of a 89.87% increase in Conversion Rate (CR) from the format.

Experiment Design

1. Do some research on popup designs I like, including copy.
2. Design new popup.
3. Set it up on the blog subdomain only.
4. Pause currently running slide-in popup.
5. Let the views roll in to at least 1,000 impressions.

Resource Estimation and Probability

Results

The winning variation will add 24 new blog subscribers per 1,000 impressions which is 53.46% increase in acquisition compared to the control version.

Learnings

• Exit intent is powerful

I ‘finger-in-the-air’d my conversion rate prediction, as you would when it’s your very first iteration. So, ending slightly under doesn’t worry me much.

I am actually really impressed at how much better an exit-intent popup performs vs. a slide-in.

My thinking was if someone scrolls past a certain point on my page, there is a higher chance they’re interested in my content and will want to sign up. Conversely, if they aim for the exit button, they may find it crap and want to get the hell out.

Turns out, not really. Pleased with this result.

• Exit intent gets more exposure

This should have been obvious before I even started my experiment. An exit-intent popup gets faster impressions than a slide-in. This makes sense, of course.

It’s good though because it allows faster iterating. I will be able to test with decent impression counts faster than I could with other methods.

Action Items

1. Start a new test using both popups at the same time (exit-intent and slide-in).
2. Use the exact same designs as their previous iterations, to keep consistency high and the results more reliable.
3. Run for 1,000 impressions each.
4. See if running both popups at the same time performs better than running either one by themselves.

Will giving my readers to opportunities to signup trump giving them just the one? Or will it annoy them so much they’ll send me death threats?

I hope you found value in this experiment. If you have feedback on this or would like to share your own experience with popups, hit the comment section below.

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