Written on October 23rd, 2008 at 12:10 am by Darren Rowse
How to Drastically Increase Subscriber Numbers to Your Email Newsletter
Two weeks ago I was seeing 40 new email subscribers per day to my photography blog email newsletter. This week I’ve been averaging over 350 new subscribers a day. In this post I’ll share the story of how I did it.
In this months ProBlogger Newsletter I gave subscribers some inside information on how I’ve increased the daily newsletter subscriber rate to my photography blog almost tenfold in the last couple of weeks.
Before using this technique I was averaging around 40 new (and verified) subscribers a day to my email newsletter (I use Aweber to manage my email newsletters). To be honest I was pretty happy with that. 40 a day is over 14,000 per year – who would complain about that!
However last week I decided to experiment with a feature that Aweber offers its publishers that I’d resisted using previously – the ability to collect subscribers using a ‘Pop Over’ subscription form.
Most bloggers with newsletters put their subscriber form in a sidebar like this:
This is a good and prominent position above the fold and in a place that people notice.
The Pop Over on the other hand is a form that appears, hovering over the content on the page, after a certain predetermined time frame. Here is one of the versions that I’ve been testing:
These Pop Over subscription forms are of course much more intrusive to readers than a sidebar form – this is the reason I resisted using them for so long. My fear was that they’d annoy readers, page views per visit would drop and that I’d end up with a lot of angry emails from readers.
Aweber gives different options to limit how many times these Pop Overs appear on your site – you can show them to every visitor, limit them to show once per visitor or have them show every ‘X’ days. You can also use what they call a ‘lightbox’ which allows you to have the rest of your content fade and for the form to fade in, slide in from above, below or a side etc. I’m testing the Lightbox against the PopOver at present and my early tests are incredibly positive and are increasing subscriber rates even further than pop overs!
So what was the result of my testing?
I think this chart of my subscriber numbers says a lot:
I think it is probably pretty obvious when the test started. The last days results are still incomplete but look like being similar to the day before.
Average confirmed subscribers per day have risen to over 350 per day (over a year this would translate to over 125,000) so at least on that front it has been successful.
But what has the reader feedback been?
To this point I’ve had two readers email me to complain about the Pop Overs. One saw them multiple times (I suspect because the cookies associated with them seem to be associated with different versions of the Pop Overs). The other complaint came from an iPhone user who said that the Pop Over took up the whole screen and was impossible to close (something Aweber might want to do some testing on).
Did Reader Engagement or Page Views Suffer?
One of my concerns with Pop overs was that readers would be annoyed by them and surf away from the page. As a result I’ve paid particular attention to the ‘pages viewed per visit’ statistic on Google. Here’s how it looks (click to enlarge):
Pages viewed per visitor has remained stable – in fact if anything they are slightly up since I began the experiment!
Considering page views per visitor didn’t go down and I’m adding 350 or so new potential weekly readers to my blog each day I’d say reader engagement has actually significantly been increasing!
Split Test for Better Results
One of the great things about AWeber is that they’ve built in the ability to split test different versions of subscription forms.
This means that you can design two different forms and have them each show 50% of the time to readers of your blog. Over time it becomes clear that one version out performs another enabling you to then test the best performer with another version of the signup form – making incremental improvements as you go along.
I’ve been testing on two levels:
1. Timing – you can test subscription rates on forms that have a short time before appearing versus forms that have a longer time before appearing. I’ve found that forms that take longer periods of time to appear have a slightly higher signup rate. However these forms show to less people as some navigate away from the page.
2. Copy and Design – the copy and design in your signup form impacts signup rates. I’ve found pictures seem to increase signup rates – also giving benefits and strong calls to action seem to increase signup rates also.
As a guide – I’m seeing signup rates of between 4-5.5%, depending upon the forms. I’m still playing with the split testing though – there is lots to learn!
Final Thoughts
Over all I’m pretty happy that I began to experiment with Pop Over signup forms. On DPS they’ve worked very well and are helping me to make first time readers loyal readers.
I don’t think that they’d work with every blog in the same way. For example to this point I’ve resisted using Pop Over subscription forms here on ProBlogger as I think the audience here will be more annoyed by them than on my photography blog as ProBlogger readers tend to be a bit more skeptical of intrusive marketing.
As always – it’s something to test and track. Pay attention to signals of how readers are receiving it and tread carefully. However don’t rule it out completely too quickly – you could be missing out on a significant way to convert first time readers into loyal ones.
One thing that I think would also be good to experiment with is targeting specific types of readers with Pop Overs. I think specifically targeting search engine visitors with these would make more sense than to target those coming from RSS Readers for example (or at least to be able to present different versions of the pop overs to different readers). Aweber didn’t seem to have plans for doing this themselves but suggested that it would be possible to do with a little coding (I’ll need to work out how).
PS: Tomorrow I’d like to follow up this post with the answer to the most common question that I get when I talk about newsletters – why should a blogger consider starting a newsletter? Stay tuned to my RSS feed for this followup post.
Tags: Aweber, Blog Promotion, finding readers, newsletters, Subscribers
129 Responses to “How to Drastically Increase Subscriber Numbers to Your Email Newsletter” - Add Yours
Surender
October 23rd, 2008 12:18 am
Really a nice post.Thanks for this help dareen.
Thanks a lot.
Acakadut
October 23rd, 2008 12:29 am
for me, I don’t like a website with that kind of “pop”, very annoying.
it makes your website looks “cheap”.
again, it’s for me ;)
Kat Tancock
October 23rd, 2008 12:33 am
Interesting post, and great numbers – congratulations! My perspective as a user is that I’d be annoyed at multiple forms (every time I clicked through or visited the site, for example), but once or twice would be fine.
Can you track how well it performed with returning vs. new visitors?
Your Friendly Neighborhood Computer Guy
October 23rd, 2008 12:33 am
Cool info! I love seeing hard statistics like these to back-up these types of claims. I don’t have a newsletter for ym blog, but I do have one for another website and I’ll be giving aweber a serious look to replace my current newsletter service.
JoshScanlan.com
October 23rd, 2008 12:34 am
Good tip and I may use it, but those layover pop up things sort of annoy me…. Sort of hard to argue with the results, though.
Dave
October 23rd, 2008 12:34 am
I was just checking out DPS when you wrote about it the other day, and noticed the “pop up”…which I immediately closed without reading since I thought it was just an ad. Couple suggestions/thoughts:
1) It obviously works, but it is annoying. I would suggest enabling it maybe just a few days out of a month.
2) I would design it to better match the site if it’s possible. This way it looks less like an ad, and more like something I would have a second to read.
Regardless, driving 7 times as many subscribers per day is quite impressive. It’s just a matter of juggling the line between effective and annoying. You could also make more money by adding another ad spot, but the line stops at some point.
ROW
October 23rd, 2008 12:36 am
Hi Darren,
I tried contacting you for a guest post through this form [http://www.problogger.net/contact] I am not sure whether you have received the mail or it has gone into spam.
If you have received and are not interested, please ignore this. Otherwise you can contact me on the mail id mentioned in the comment.
Dave
October 23rd, 2008 12:36 am
Oh, if it’s possible to pop on the SECOND page view, that may work better from a users perspective. That way new users don’t get immediately turned off. While I wouldn’t leave a site from that popping up, I know many others would. It does come off as “cheap”, especially when designed the way it is, as one comment above stated.
Thomas Flight - Netager.com
October 23rd, 2008 12:37 am
That is an interesting idea. Do you know of any other email services that can do this?
I don’t like pop-ups either, but those are often ads.
If I’m subscribed already I would never want to see this. But I wouldn’t mind if it was my first time on the site.
bench
October 23rd, 2008 12:38 am
You are merging aweber subscribers with your RSS subscribers, which is resulting in artificially increasing your feed reader count. Your “regular” feed readers are still the same, but your subscription numbers are fake.
If I understand this correctly, if this is what you are doing (along with Yaro Starak who also increased his 20k feed subscriber count to 45k over night), I think this is wrong; if this doesn’t break any feedburner TOS, atleast its morally wrong.
Maria Reyes-McDavis
October 23rd, 2008 12:40 am
This is absolutely super! Thanks so much for sharing in such a transparent way about building an email list. Passing this one now!
Matej
October 23rd, 2008 12:53 am
Now we just need to wait that someone make wordpress plugin for that , with feedburner email subscriptions :)
Wendy Leal
October 23rd, 2008 12:54 am
Great information! I am going to go test this right now. BTW, found your post from Twitter! Someone was sharing it.
axel g
October 23rd, 2008 1:15 am
Hey Darren!
The feature that allows you to program when the pop-up window should be launched, seems like a practical tool.
Great post +_+
Edge Girl
October 23rd, 2008 1:19 am
I use the pop over sign ups for specific pages of my site to add to a specific list rather than the general list where I have the static sign up above the fold.
It works well and I did not a significant increase of subscribers using this. I have another product I am going to try and if it works well I’ll be implementing across my websites.
Glad to see your numbers and actual documentation on what I suspected.
Roy Scribner
October 23rd, 2008 1:26 am
That’s some impressive results! Now if there was just some way to reduce the unverifieds. It looks like you are running about 25%, which is consistent with my results.
Sarah H.
October 23rd, 2008 1:29 am
Thanks for explaining this Darren. I noticed these pop-ups on DPS last week (oops I don’t subscribe…but that’s because I just visit daily anyway!!). My first impression was to be a little annoyed by them, but now that I see your results, I am intrigued. Well done!
Daniel Richard
October 23rd, 2008 1:30 am
The content there is already way awesome. Having an intrusive pop up box wouldn’t affect much at all. :)
snozz
October 23rd, 2008 1:32 am
i gotta say, i absolutely and without exception do leave a site when a pop over appears.
assuming the best, a site creator or blog author creates content to share information with others or to communicate what they perceive as an important message; as a visitor i am doing my part by seeking and consuming information i need or considering the message they want me to.
to interrupt me in that by obstructing the content you have created with a commercial message (and *any* sign up is a commercial message or it wouldn’t exist) immediately flags the content as existing solely to get my email address, and trivializes the entire site to the point of irrelevancy and my exit.
Robin Piggott
October 23rd, 2008 1:32 am
Hi Darren ,
Excellent post on the extras offered by Aweber. Shall definitely try it out.
Aweber’s blog updates can be very informative I find and their service is superb as you know!
Found you via Twitter..Many Thanks…
Tom Kulzer (AWeber CEO)
October 23rd, 2008 1:34 am
Great post Darren, excellent summary of experiences. Used correctly a hover popover can be immensely helpful in building a quality subscriber list.
You mentioned testing the timing of the pop. One thing we’ve tested and noted is typically the sweet spot for the pop delay is the average visitor time for the page or 10-20 seconds less than that time. While it may be seen by fewer visitors, the ones that it are shown to are much more engaged with your content and you’ll get a much higher quality subscriber.
Just tested the iPhone issue you mentioned and we can’t seem to reproduce the problem here. Everything seems to work fine and the pop can be easily closed on the iPhone. Please let me know if you hear anything else that might allow us to reproduce the issue your site visitor noted.
Ryan McLean
October 23rd, 2008 1:39 am
Great tips Darren! WOW! 109k subscribers?!!?!?!?!?!? HOLY MOLY, thats a lot of people. I’ve been trying to get more subscribers to my blog, maybe I’ll try this method.
Jean-Christophe
October 23rd, 2008 2:04 am
Very valuable information, I deal with a 9000+ subscribers newsletter but the growing rate of new suscribers is not as high as it could be. Btw, I am using opensource software Phplist to manage the news, this feature is not included as far as I know, is there any other service available for Europe ? As Opensource to manage on my own or as online service ?
Frugal Dad
October 23rd, 2008 2:04 am
I think Daniel Richard (commenter above) made a good point. I’m not sure how successful this would be when starting up a new blog, but once the content has grown to a point where it is of significant value I think readers become more forgiving of things like this. This may be why the experiment worked so well for Darren, but might bomb for others with much less-established sites.
Todd Mintz
October 23rd, 2008 2:05 am
Awesome idea…I now see how this can help my business…thanks.
Melanie Nelson
October 23rd, 2008 2:07 am
What an incredibly useful post. I remember that Aweber was mentioned a few times at BWE08, but I had forgotten about it until you mentioned it again. Thanks for the review/testing/explanation. I’m going over to look at it now.
Mark Mason
October 23rd, 2008 2:07 am
Great post. You are not testing on ProBlogger because you think we will be annoyed — but isn’t that the same thought you had on DPS? I think you should test it here.
Mark
Shopping Queen
October 23rd, 2008 2:12 am
I currently use Constant Contact and have been tempted to use Aweber for this feature. But I really like Constant Contact and am a little hesitant to try and move all my current subscribers, settings and emails. So I have looked into separate pop over programs and have come up with Advanced DHTML Popup. I have played around a little with it but am wondering if anyone else had any experience with this or any other similar program.
Ben Adkins
October 23rd, 2008 2:13 am
Very Useful post. I have been thinking about putting together a monthly newsletter for our site to recap everything that we talked about in the month and I’ve been looking for some good ways to get people to sign up. I will be exploring this further.
Thanks Darren,
Dr. Ben
Dave
October 23rd, 2008 2:18 am
Darren, correct me if I’m wrong but Aweber charges $149 per month for 25K subscribers. 100K subscribers obviously would cost quite a bit more. Is it really worth the expense to maintain an Aweber mailing list at those prices ?
I’ve tried my hand at maintaining email lists before but the results were so poor it wasn’t worth it. In most cases, people use their junk email addresses to subscribe, so most of the time you’re sending to a dead email address.
Even if they are reading the mailer, you’re lucky if you could get 1-2% of your subscribers to bother to click anything.
Is there something I’m missing?
SEO UK
October 23rd, 2008 2:25 am
Thats a great improvement. What I believe is that as you made clear it is all dependant on your target market. As you said if you were to put it on here although you would probably see a significant increase in subscribers many people would probably get annoyed and email you with their complaints.
It all depends on the market if, generally they are not regarded as being tech savvy this could work as both an advantage and disadvantage.
The advantage being that they would probably not feel as annoyed or suspicous that it may be a marketing ploy.
The disadvantage would be that they may feel weary to sign up to something thats just suddenly appeared.
They may even regard it as a pop up advert and you know everyone hates them.
Alex D
October 23rd, 2008 2:28 am
You’re a genius! I will definitely try this! Thank you.
Devin @ CoolProducts
October 23rd, 2008 2:40 am
One thing that I love about ProBlogger is that you have another blog that’s even more successful and you’re able to translate results that you see over there into useful articles for us! Incredible job of using visual aids to supplement the text and support your argument! It’s great to hear your positive results and I am glad that you share this information with us.
B. Durant
October 23rd, 2008 2:51 am
I had thought of this about 3 days ago but then was wondering if it would be a violation of Google’s adsense policies about pop overs and unders. I know it says “that interfere with navigation” but wonder how broad that term interfere is.
androo
October 23rd, 2008 3:01 am
great topic… i’ll have to try this and see if it works for my blog…thanks for the tip!
Sital
October 23rd, 2008 3:03 am
Thanks Darren
I have resisted this too thought it annoys peopl.
But based on your comments I think it’s worth testing and watching the stats.
Question – I use google analytics. Are the all the stats you use above from GA or elsewhere?
Gio
October 23rd, 2008 3:07 am
I have a website that when you click on our “Join the Newsletter” it takes you to a page that you can sign up to become a member. My question for your readers is: is it wise for me to create a member registration newsletter separate for just a basic newsletter or continue what I’m doing?
Adam Singer
October 23rd, 2008 3:43 am
Nice approach, I would be weary of doing this on a tech blog though…you would certainly annoy those type of users.
Potato Chef
October 23rd, 2008 3:59 am
Interesting. I would have been real nervous about trying this out. I know that those bug the heck out of me. But if it works…great.
Simple Sapien
October 23rd, 2008 4:15 am
Thanks for sharing your results of your testing with us. I can’t believe how dramatic that increase was. And by the way, all this talk about subscriptions has caused me to subscribe to your ProBlogger newsletter! Even more subscribers just by talking about subscribing!
- Jack Rugile
Simple Sapien
Grant D Griffiths
October 23rd, 2008 4:23 am
I recently started a newsletter at my blog and I can say, the sign up has been pretty good. I have not tried the pop-over signup for the same reason you state as to why you have not done it here on Problogger.
I am trying other ways to get subscribers, like putting a reminder at the bottom of each post and also at the bottom of the RSS feeds that go out via email. Aweber and FeedBurner have been wonderful tools to use for this too. I would also highly recommend Aweber as a auto-responder and newsletter management tool.
Like you Darren, I have always had a fear such pop-overs would turn visitors and readers off at the blog for using them. Your stats are certainly interesting and something to think about. When we did the redesign on Blog For Profit, we decided one of the things we were going to do was try some new techniques to build its community. And a newsletter was one of them. Using different plugins and widgets were also on our list.
While I may not try the pop-over on BFP, we may try it on another of our blogs when we do its redesign soon.
I look forward to your follow up post on this one about why a blogger should do a newsletter. Building a community was my key reason. Thanks again.
Rajaie AlKorani
October 23rd, 2008 4:27 am
I would be very interested in knowing how well this would work with blogs like yours (Problogger), but I guess they wouldn’t work out too well – as you said above.
I guess it’s because many more of the readers already know these marketing tactics, so they wouldn’t bother.
But hey! Maybe you should try!
Wayne John
October 23rd, 2008 4:29 am
Aweber huh? I wonder how long it will take FeedBurner to get something similar going. I would also be hesitant to include this due to the annoying factor, but it seems that really isn’t a factor, not much anyway. Thanks!
MLRebecca
October 23rd, 2008 4:32 am
Wow! I’ve heard great things about Aweber, but I had no idea they had a popover option. I am so impressed by your results. I will have to look into this on my own. Thanks for posting, Darren!
Christy Jordan
October 23rd, 2008 4:44 am
This post was excellent. I came over as soon as I saw the tweet. Just what I have been looking for. Having been turned on to AWeber now, I am looking into how I can expand by putting them to work for Southern Plate!
Thank you very much. I always look forward to increasing my productivity through Problogger.
Christy
Webdesi3
October 23rd, 2008 5:10 am
This is really great, I’ve been toying with the idea of a drop down subscription box for a newsletter for one of my other sites but was put off by idea that most people avoid pages with drop downs and navigate away from the site, but your results prove me very wrong indeed…this is worth trying, thank you!
CoolProducts
October 23rd, 2008 5:18 am
It seems like this has genuinely helped out your blog a huge deal. I’m definitely going to have to look into this further. Thanks for the advice and the recommendation, I hope this works out as well for me as it did you.
Dan tanner
October 23rd, 2008 6:05 am
This innovative pop up stuff. I will definitely use this. Good one here thanks.
Video Marketing
October 23rd, 2008 6:10 am
Interesting. Balancing what’s best for the readers while achieving business goals is one of the toughest things. Obviously, you’ll feel a lot better if what you’re offering with the pop-up is of actual value to the reader.
Dan tanner
October 23rd, 2008 6:15 am
Extremely helpful post must I admit blatantly. I have been thinking of using Aweber for some time, they are bit expensive yet very very good. Have known them since 1999 they did wonders for our mortgage business when web was new and I would send out series of emails and convert them. I used a newsletter even though I was available by phone.
The last paragraph of this post is where it all meets.. A blogger or a Salesman— needs to be in touch with its potential customers base ! I made a good living doing it.
David
October 23rd, 2008 6:53 am
Like the idea, but just to let you know, something is not working right.. I went to http://digital-photography-school.com/blog/ and the window box popped up automatically for me to subscribe after a little time, but it showed with scroll bars and the close link was not visible.
Blogging Millionaire
October 23rd, 2008 7:23 am
That is a lot of subscribers!
RhondaL
October 23rd, 2008 8:05 am
I think they might work if you have tech-savvy readers, but I think they might backfire if you don’t.
They remind me too much of the dreaded pop-up. Very intrusive. I don’t want to inflict something that I don’t care for on my readers.
The thing is, I’ve been running into them a lot lately and I’m a little tired, as a websurfer, of clearing them. Having to deal with one won’t be a dealbreaker if I want the product already, but if I’m on the fence and I’ve had to clear a pop-up/pop-under? Um, I’m very liable to pass on principle.
And now that they’ve been reported as successful, I suppose I’ll see them all over the place.
Michael Martine - Remarkablogger
October 23rd, 2008 8:44 am
This is one of those cases where the test results don’t lie. The reality may fly in the face of expectation or preconception, but that’s the point of testing: do what works.
Maybe I should automate all my Twitter responses…
Nah. :-)
Andrew Brown
October 23rd, 2008 8:54 am
It looks like you’ve put a lot more eyes on you.
Do you think that this traffic gain is cheap or in-expensive?
Darren Rowse
October 23rd, 2008 9:07 am
bench – I’m not sure what the problem is. The button doesn’t say ‘RSS subscriber’s – it counts ‘readers’. Feedburner make this available and don’t seem to have a problem with it. I don’t think there is anything ‘morally’ wrong about it as the numbers just count how many people are subscribing.
Snozz – I’m sure you’re not the only one who leaves sites with popups and I thought the amount of people who would would have been higher than it seems. From what I see I’m probably loosing less than 1% of readers (possibly quite a bit less) but hooking in around 5% of readers to be repeat visitors. I guess that’s an equation I have to constantly look at and count the cost of.
Tom Kulzer – I did test timing of the pop overs and found that a little less than the average time on site was actually not the best performer for me. I found a 20 second delay seems to be working best (so far) – but I need to test further. I’ll let you know if there is any more feedback on the iPhone problems.
Frugal Dad – yes I’d probably avoid such an aggressive technique in the very early days of a blog. Perhaps you could do a less aggressive system where the pop over only shows after a certain number of page views in the early days (as someone here suggested).
Mark Mason – I think the audience here at ProBlogger would be more annoyed than the audience at DPS – mainly because on ProBlogger I have a readership of website owners who are typically more suspicious of intrusive kinds of ads than your average web user. If I do test it here at ProBlogger it’d only be in a much less aggressive way (ie targetting Search Engine visitors or showing only after a certain number of page views).
Dave – Aweber isn’t the cheapest solution out there but I’m willing to pay for it simply because it’s reliable (a very low % of my emails get blocked as opposed to my last email provider), the features are excellent (there’s a lot of ways to improve and track results) and I’ve found the customer service to be quite amazing. Sure I’d love a discount now I’ve got so many subscribers (Tom…. come on, surely I deserve a discount! :-) ) but when you have 100k of subscribers and a few of them click on and respond to an affiliate link it can pay for itself over a month.
Sital – the stats in the first picture are from Aweber itself – the page views per visit chart is from Analytics. Aweber gives a lot of different reports that can track a lot of things but you’ll also need a site analytics program also.
To those thinking of testing this – good luck with it. Just watch the results. If you get push back from your readers or notice problems with decreasing page views etc keep tweaking and/or consider stopping the test. It won’t work for everyone but is worth a try.
Hugh
October 23rd, 2008 9:46 am
wow that is a pretty hefty subscriber increase there. amazing how something you would think would turn people off (thats what i would think!) actually does the complete opposite. Goes to show it never hurts to try! you might not ever know.
Gilberto J Perera
October 23rd, 2008 10:31 am
Darren – I’m so glad that you posted this article, I had visited DPS yesterday and saw the pop-up for the first time, I thought to myself, I bet this thing is great (working for you), I felt that it was unobtrusive and I liked its simplicity – I even looked at your source to see what company you were using…thanks for this great article.
Bjorf
October 23rd, 2008 11:56 am
I’ve looked for a Wordpress plug-in to do this (without Aweber) but haven’t found anything that works well. I tried MaxBlogPress but it caused errors. Anyone know of something else that works?
Victor
October 23rd, 2008 12:27 pm
Darren – do you think it would be a good idea to include your logo/brand in the subscription form to reduce the “spammy looks”? Many of the obtrusive things you typically see in sites are third party ads and that’s what make them see spammy – I think that a clear reference to your own brand could reduce that effect. Is it possible to test that with aweber?
TeasasTips
October 23rd, 2008 12:35 pm
Hey Darren, I like how that pop over works for you…but you know, as you’ve probably already read, most of us hate these things…but it seems to work for DPS….so, to each his own….
Matthew Clark
October 23rd, 2008 12:45 pm
I like this, thanks for the report. I to have resisted the use of popovers for my newsletter now with what your results so and what Aweber also says I will add this feature.
Kim McGinnis
October 23rd, 2008 12:46 pm
Darren,
These results are amazing, but I am not altogether surprised. It is astounding that people sign up with the pop up, just as people seem to respond to those obnoxious long sales letter in large bold red and black lettering.
Too bad…I prefer subtle to obnoxious. But I also like a substantial database.
Thank you for sharing those stats…something to think about!
David
October 23rd, 2008 1:08 pm
Pretty tough to argue with the results but it is also not surprising as people often ignore sidebars at this stage.
Nathan Hangen
October 23rd, 2008 3:22 pm
Thanks for the analysis. I’m really hesitant to use pop-up forms for the reasons mentioned above, but if it works then it works. I know I’ve got to find a better way to get my signup form in front of the reader…I’m trying to give away a free e-book here!
atlanta wedding photographer
October 23rd, 2008 4:04 pm
I have been blogging for about a year now. It is the main page of my wedding photography site. I have aweber and just configured the subscribe form and the pop up one. It seems that if you delay it that it will give people a chance to look at the site and decide for themselves if they want to sign up. Analytics stated that on average a person stays on my site for a little over 2 mins before leaving. So I figure I will start with the delay going for about 40secs. This will at least get people who are little more committed that those who just look and bounce.
make money online
October 23rd, 2008 6:14 pm
I am not convinced by pop ups, I like the idea of the lightbox pop up. I am really impressed by the results you achieved from the pop up though I would have thought more people would have clicked off.
Clyde Dennis
October 23rd, 2008 8:29 pm
I did some testing like this some time back and had similar results, though on a much smaller scale. Thanks for this nice reminder and wake-up call.
Ruchir Chawdhry
October 23rd, 2008 9:32 pm
“One thing that I think would also be good to experiment with is targeting specific types of readers with Pop Overs. I think specifically targeting search engine visitors with these would make more sense than to target those coming from RSS Readers for example (or at least to be able to present different versions of the pop overs to different readers). Aweber didn’t seem to have plans for doing this themselves but suggested that it would be possible to do with a little coding (I’ll need to work out how).”
I emailed you regarding how to target the pop-over…
graphic design brisbane
October 23rd, 2008 10:31 pm
well all I can do is post my opinion and obviously I wasn’t one of the 350 a day to subscribe. I really only find the pop-overs annoying and really cheapen a site, and now I just get in the habit of closing them as a rule without reading them first. I think while the numbers are great congrates on that, if you continued to keep this level of targeting, you would start to lose people.
Just my 2 cents.
Joel Drapper
October 23rd, 2008 11:04 pm
Looks great! I wonder if iContact has something like this.
Magneto
October 23rd, 2008 11:18 pm
I would agree with graphicdesign brisbane. I do not think viewers deserve this. It increases your count all right, that is no surprise, but this is like forcing people to do it.
Living on Adsense Blog
October 23rd, 2008 11:54 pm
In regards to the controlling who will see the pop over signup forms. I know there is a word press plugin that I use to show my adsense ads to only search engine visitors that is called “Who Sees Ads”
You may be able to use this plugin and modify it to suit your aweber popover needs.
albachtimi - online information about blogging and tips
October 24th, 2008 12:52 am
That’s good idea to make my blog subscribers to increase, but your blog has been known by tons of people now. Does it work on new blog?
charles
October 24th, 2008 2:06 am
125,000 readers in a year? Twice than problogger’s readers. This is a very helpful article specially how effective aweber features are. Is Aweber a free or paid service?
Gary Arndt
October 24th, 2008 2:47 am
I go to Aweber to check it out. Try to sign up. Get this message:
We are currently not processing new orders online. Please contact customer service at 800.531.5065 or help@aweber.com to order.
Great way to convert leads.
Chris Jacobson
October 24th, 2008 3:55 am
I had my Entrecard account deleted today for taking this advice, Darren! It’s against their terms… AdSense also doesn’t like pop-overs.
Larry Weaver
October 24th, 2008 6:00 am
This is fascinating insight. I’ve always understood the effectiveness of pop-overs, but harbor a personal disdain for them. It’s my nature not to subject my visitors to something I myself dislike. But you’ve got me thinking that I should take another look. As you say, it’s definitely worth testing!
Mark Fulton
October 24th, 2008 6:18 am
I have a popover on my new domain sales marketplace @ http://AQDN.com and it works wonders, my opt-in rate went up significantly and I have no complaints.
Steven-Sanders
October 24th, 2008 7:40 am
I hate pop-over and pop-unders! I’m sure alot of readers do as well.
I don’t think I’ll risk turning away visitors because I want a couple more subscribers.
Taylor Thompson
October 24th, 2008 12:22 pm
AWEBER DOESN’T WORK
A Weber doesn’t work with Youtube and may not work with other embedded content while using the “Light Box Hover” feature of the program
Just look at this screen capture:
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qbyo1P7zH7M/SQEOomZPsjI/AAAAAAAADJw/N-DmR3DcPrk/s1600-h/example.png
As you can see, Youtube overlays the subscription area which is a BIG PROBLEM
I contacted John Chow who is having the same problem. He had no idea what I was talking about. I guess he didn’t know there was an error.
I contacted AWeber customer support and they basically told me to fix it myself or get rid of the videos on my site. Right… Get rid of videos on a site called, “Video Blogging Tips.”
Next, I would recommend the pop-up system that AWeber offers as an alternate, but nobody likes pop-ups and almost everyone these days has a pop-up blocker.
With that being said, AWeber is almost a garbage program. At least, until they fix this feature that is.
If anyone knows anything about this issue, please contact me at ttomp13@gmail.com. Also, contact John Chow at johnchow@johnchow.com.
Please be sure to post a comment here too.
Thanks.
Taylor Thompson
Video Blogging Tips dot Com
Virtual Web Symphony
October 24th, 2008 5:48 pm
I have my own doubts. Visitors will definitely get annoyed on experiencing pop ups and my refrain from coming back. However if content is good, visitors will keep coming back.
Robert Garcia
October 24th, 2008 10:02 pm
I personally don’t like pop-overs or pop unders because I find them to be very annoying but your results speak for themselves.
Maybe it makes a difference what you say in the pop over to make people want to put in their email address.
Thanks for letting us know about your results
Robert Garcia
http://WealthByChocolate.com
Stephen D
October 25th, 2008 2:17 am
Interesting post – I was looking at another (very similar) service earlier today and decided not to go with it because of the pop up the company employed, but I think I will into AWeber service. I tested your pop up at DPSchool and liked the fade in – it ‘introduced’ itself in a nice kind of way. I had no problems closing it btw.
I guess the main points for anyone to consider is the audience of the website and the frequency the pop over is displayed. I think the delay you employ is also a good idea as a new visitor will have already decided to stay or leave and if they have decided to stay they are quite likely to also sign up for the newsletter.
Taylor
October 25th, 2008 4:21 am
Hey. I was just wondering if anyone has acknowledged my post above?
Robin
October 25th, 2008 4:28 am
Thanks Daren. I have signed up an account with them. Let me see some improvement in my blog. :)
Patrick Britton
October 25th, 2008 6:44 am
I’m attempting to see if this works for my readers. My main worry is that it will annoy them but if I get a lot of complaints I’ll take it off.
For Wordpress users, there is a decent plugin that works wonderfully. http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-popup-scheduler/
German Romance
October 25th, 2008 10:45 am
Exellent, this is is exactly what I have been looking for. I am in process of creating my oen email list, will implement your tips. Thanks again.
Groovy Vegetarian (a/k/a Missy)
October 25th, 2008 12:53 pm
Chris (@money making scoop):
Glad to get this feedback. Maybe Tim from Aweber will come back and clarify on this matter. As this could be terrible for an Adsense blogger who installs the pop-up and loses account or gets banned for using it. Ouch.
Good looking out. I use both EC and Adsense. Yikes!
Dimitri
October 25th, 2008 1:58 pm
Very good thing to check out, thanks Darren…
Tom Kulzer (AWeber CEO)
October 26th, 2008 2:06 am
Taylor Thompson:
Please note that the problem you saw with flash videos showing thru pop-overs HTML layers is a browser/html issue. It’s a technical limitation of how the current generation of browsers work with flash. It’s not something that can be fixed on our end until Adobe flash properly respects the z-index attribute in HTML.
http://www.problogger.net/archives/2008/10/23/how-to-drastically-increase-subscriber-numbers-to-your-email-newsletter/#comment-4295749
Stephen D
There is a very distinct difference between pop-overs which Darren is talking about in this post and pop-ups when it comes to the terms of service at Google. Hover pop-overs are perfectly fine, pop-ups are prohibited. When in doubt I also recommend contacting google directly with an example page to confirm.
Kathy
October 26th, 2008 7:58 am
Hi Darren,
I played around with the pop over and have set one up but how did you get the photo of the camera into yours?
Thanks
Kath
Vishnu
October 26th, 2008 4:18 pm
Hay darren, This information looks rocking, hope i will try this out…
Thanks for this great information.This will increase my readers…
Pat with SPI
October 26th, 2008 8:20 pm
@ Kathy,
I believe in AWeber, when you edit your form, you can also add images. In the Webform Option, when you’re at Step #2, you can easy put in images.
You’ll have to use an image that you have uploaded to your site already, and put in the url. I don’t believe you can upload from Aweber itself.
I just joined Aweber 4 days ago, and I have to say, the experience has been more than satisfactory. It’s amazing! The service is great, but especially the customer service and tutorials. They even called me to make sure everything was okay. That’s getting personal right there, and I love it.
I’m going to try using the pop-up form next week. Right now I have an inline on my blog, and it’s been doing ok. If I can raise my subscriber rate by almost 900%, I think that’s a good thing.
Nepal sites
October 26th, 2008 9:39 pm
125,000 readers in a year sounds really great. definitely worth trying
Ganesh
October 27th, 2008 1:41 am
Using pop-ups to gain subscribers is a cool strategy. But I guess it won’t work in a tech oriented niche like making money online. People will just consider your blog to be one of those useless $97 dollar products. Trying it on a photography blog is sure to work. Thanks for the good post.
David
October 27th, 2008 4:31 am
Hmm very interesting info, thanks for the tip.
Sapnininkas
October 27th, 2008 4:46 am
This is amazing pop up stuff. I will use this. Thanks.
Christy Jordan
October 27th, 2008 10:21 am
I signed up for a.weber after reading this article and even included the pop up just as suggested. You were SO right on this one!
Thanks for another great bit of help!
Christy :)
hidayah@Usa People Search
October 27th, 2008 12:26 pm
Good insight from the post…..just wondering how to run newsletter …….how we can colected………the source and where we get that one.
Slick Deals 4 U
October 27th, 2008 5:06 pm
Well, people know you and your website. I think because of your already existing establishment and well know brand, people are unlikely to ignore your pop-up window/message IMO.
Thanks for the post, well written, analysed and informative.
Also how you are working around the pop up blocker? Won’t it prevent many users (especially new visitors)?
If I do this on my site which does not have traffic like you, I will be toast! ;-)
-
http://www.slickdeals4u.com
Descartes
October 28th, 2008 10:42 am
I’ve always resisted Pop-Ups as well, though you do make a compelling argument to give it a try. I really like the looks of the results you got.
Douglas Karr
October 29th, 2008 2:20 am
Curious, did you happen to set a cookie so that a user who returns doesn’t get hit over and over and over again with the popover?
Mike Huang
October 29th, 2008 8:16 am
I noticed that John and Shoemoney were using this and luckily Shoe told me your wrote a post about this. This is basically like spamming a user that wants to just read your blog. I’m sure a lot of viewers clear their cookies a least once a week or once a day…
-Mike
uzoma
October 29th, 2008 9:12 am
WOW!!! thats’ a surprise pops up work for you, the truth is I find those features on sites very disgusting but with what you have said I think I’m going to give it a try .. serious try
José
October 29th, 2008 10:50 am
Hi,
Usually I don’t like pop up windows, especially biog ones, but done with good taste, correct timing and in a logical manner, I think it fits.
I have a monthly campaign on my blog and even so I can’t get a good number of subscribers.
I like this system.
Kind regards,
José
José
October 29th, 2008 10:52 am
Hi again,
Sorry for commenting twice, but just remembered another neat thing that is usually used for advertising.
It’s those pealing ads. Maybe this method used for this purpose could also work well.
Kind regards,
José
George
October 29th, 2008 12:54 pm
I decided to try this today and so far my subscribers have tripled. I knew this would work, but have always been scared off from it, because I wasn’t sure how visitors would react to the pop over.
Social Media Marketing Blog
October 29th, 2008 7:52 pm
Well, great idea.. It is similar to landing page, isn’t it ?
Guide To LCD TV
October 29th, 2008 8:58 pm
Newsletter is a good way to constantly remind your reader to go back to your site again. I subscribe quite a number of newsletter, end up I mark them as spam instead of read through it.
Karl Sultana
October 29th, 2008 11:19 pm
Hi,
Thanks, I use aweber to deliver blog broad casts to my blog subscribers apart from displaying the rss field so anyone who wants to subscribe can do so… Aweber feature is very easy to use.
Karl
http://www.outranksmart.com/blog
Make Money Quick
October 30th, 2008 8:16 am
That’s PHENOMENAL. Testing and results is all that matters. I think that you’re predictions are right about this blog and pop ups because of the industry, BUT many of the most successful marketers in IM seem to be using them with great success.
Never Know…lol
Kenney
sudan
October 30th, 2008 2:35 pm
About Email Newsletter, I think it’s very interest & important.
But may be difficult for me and seem spam mail.
Krissy Knox
October 30th, 2008 4:30 pm
Well, you can’t argue with success.
On the other hand, I won’t be doing it. I hate pop outs. I think they are too intruisive. I bet your readers just love your blogs so much that they would read you anyway! I am not sure. I am really glad it works for you! Good luck in your success!
Steve
October 30th, 2008 10:33 pm
Ok Darren, I did it and you were dead on. I just installed it today and I can’t believe what just happened. Nice one ;)
Cant thank you enough.
arif setya
October 31st, 2008 2:46 am
Wow, it makes me more in love with this blog
Nice post i need it.
word
November 1st, 2008 11:20 am
Great information about building your email list using a blog.
Curt
November 4th, 2008 4:38 am
I’m looking forward to the follow up to this. What is your photographer newsletter at now and how long did it take you to get to that point?
Keral Patel
November 4th, 2008 3:04 pm
Aweber as always. Nice stuff. The graph is really showing drastic changes though :D
Mayor of Concord
November 5th, 2008 8:14 am
Very interesting tip. I am going to give this a shot on my local blog and see what the results are like. I’ve been gaining in readers and subscriptions on a regular basis but this may be what takes them to the next level. Thanks Darren.
Mike
November 5th, 2008 5:30 pm
Pop overs can help increasing conversions but the way you have used it makes it more effective. Thanks for sharing.
James Spinosa
November 6th, 2008 1:05 pm
As always a great post, and this data is rather conclusive given the sample size. I might have to try this out for myself as I just started a newsletter yesterday.
Hendry Lee
November 13th, 2008 11:48 pm
I browsed around the photography blog but can’t find any pop-up. Is there a reason why you take it down?
Amanda
November 14th, 2008 1:03 am
We’ve seen the same results on our own sites when we’ve used them and on our clients sites. The key for us has been to make sure that the user only sees the Pop Over (we call them “Floaters”) once upon entry. Once they start seeing them every time they click to a new part of your site that’s when the annoyance comes.
We’ve also found the lightbox effect to work VERY well. The Motley Fool (fool.com) used to use that and had incredibly high conversion rates. Then someone new took over and got rid of most of their conversion architecture but that’s another story.
Good to see a blogger try out what some might call a more corporate and traditional “marketing gimmick” and see that the proof is in the numbers! :)
Traci Moore
December 25th, 2008 12:52 pm
WOW! Those results are amazing… what a huge increase in the @ of opt-ins!! I’m going to have to try it. I had heard of the lightbox pop up from Aweber, what is the other one?
Traci Moore Blogging over @ http://www.tracimoore.com
john
February 23rd, 2009 2:21 pm
>>I go to Aweber to check it out. Try to sign up. Get this message:
>>We are currently not processing new orders online. Please contact customer service at 800.531.5065 or help@aweber.com to order.
Aweber are dishonest profilers.They don’t want foreigners for customers but are afraid to say that honestly. If you are in certain countries you get that phony message. If you go through a proxy you’ll see the message disappears.
Hey, aweber, why don’t you judge people based on their actions not what country they live in? Or be honest and say what you’re doing in profiling and prejudging people?
Eruwan Gerry
February 28th, 2009 10:03 am
Hi Darren,
Thanks for the great advice! :)
Oliver
April 7th, 2009 2:41 am
I’ve tried it on my site for the last few days, and though the numbers are not enough evidence yet, the conversion rate is at least 5 times as high as the normal forms!
Of course, you must take into account, that when visiting ANY page on my site, the normal form is shown, while the pop-up-fade-in form only shows once per visitor. Therefore the higher conversion rates. I can’t really expect loyal readers to subscribe every time they visit my page, right? :-).
Furthermore, the pop up only appears after 15-20 seconds, so anyone who only visits for 5 seconds (the non-interested, the digg’ers) will not see the pop-up-fade-in form.
Cheers,
Oliver
Justin Vanhove
June 17th, 2009 4:49 pm
Darren,
I love the way you write blog posts that are supported by real statistics. Furthermore, you show proof of those statistics that engages you more in the article because you actually believe what is being written.
Anyways, this is a great blog post. I offer a free 5 day ecourse on my website. My subscriber rate is a little over 3%. This is suprising considering I am offering a free course on passive income.
What I use to implement it is a “Pop Under”. I use it only on the hompage. Why? I use Site Build It to build and operate my website on. They do not offer the option of putting a pop under or any kind of thing like that on the homepage.
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