If a visitor leaves your website without subscribing to your list, they may be gone for good. Don’t let that happen! Catch them on their way out the door with an exit-intent signup form.

Learn how in this episode:

00:22 Andy Shore: Everybody welcome back to Clues for the Clueless Email Marketer. And today we’re gonna start, first of a handful of episodes continuing about growing your list but this gonna kick off really talking about the exit intent popup form. Because more websites than a couple of years ago are using it. But I think it’s still a strategy that a lot of people should consider because, I mean as we mentioned in the last episode, what an exit intent form is, is when someone’s going to exit out of your website or leave the page, it catches them on their way out the door and it’s like, “Hey do you wanna subscribe?” So even if they’re still gonna leave, you’re gonna be able to follow up with them and not lose all the traffic that the rest of your marketing did the work to get to your page, and then they’re gonna leave and maybe never be seen again. So this is kind of that hail Mary that you throw to keep someone in the communication loop.

01:13 Daniel Miller: Exactly. And I think this goes without saying, any time that you’re trying to get somebody’s email as a lead, right? Not as a customer or something like that, as a lead your initial goal is to reduce your expense and overall workflows to get that person back, right. Meaning just like Andy said, if you’re marketing team spent all that effort to get somebody on to your page, you wanna try to get an email something so it’s a more direct channel to get them back. And also it gives you the opportunity to open a conversation with them and stay engaged through email, right? So when it comes down to popup forms, exactly before they walk out the door, you wanna try to offer something of value that will not necessarily keep them on your site, but it’s kind of like, “Hey let’s talk later” kind of conversation.

02:01 AS: Yeah, definitely. I mean, like he has said, you do so much work to bring someone to your website, there’s SEO, there’s social media, there’s offline advertising, whatever it is they’re doing, your URL is on every single one of those things, whether it’s a link to click there, in the print ads, in your restaurants, and your store, you’re doing work to drive someone to the website, so getting them there, there’s a lot of testing to make sure that all the content is right, that they’re able to find what they’re looking for, but not everyone’s exactly the same. You can only test so much, you’re not gonna please everyone all the time. So when you do have this exit intent, it is like it’s your last line of defense.

02:42 DM: Yeah.

02:42 AS: It’s that last thing that’s gonna be that, well, all your work isn’t for not. We’re gonna put up this one last effort, it’s really gonna make sure that all that other work was worth it to get that subscriber because, we’ve talked a few times about micro-wins, but that’s kind of what getting someone to sign up to your list is. It’s another win in the process of gaining customers. Gaining repeat business, and turning them into like brand evangelists. If you’re doing all your communication right, that’s what the end result is. So getting someone in your list, we keep telling you how important it is but you can’t give up, wouldn’t go down without a fight, and that’s kind of why we’re gonna dedicate so much time here to the exit intent popup form.

03:27 DM: Yeah, and a good thing of it is, if you do the popup form right as somebody’s on your site or if they’ve been on your site for let’s say a minute or two, when you show that popup form then, giving a discount or giving an add-on, you may be already giving a discount on somebody that was already gonna buy, right? But if they’re about to leave, you know, that’s the last step, like, “Hey wait a second, right before you leave, check this out here’s a 10% off, or here’s our manual or guide”, whatever that could be. So it kinda helps aligning your journey with what the customer is actually doing. And making sure that you’re not just giving things away for free or giving discounts away when people were already gonna go through that process.

04:08 AS: Yeah, and to that point, in terms of wanting to build a list around the people who want to hear from you, when you sign that popup right away or you’re just offering a discount, you might be adding people who just added ’cause it was right there in front of them, and sure that’ll seem like a victory in the beginning, but if those people aren’t gonna then continue to open your emails to interact with them, then it’s, you’re not gonna want those on your list and you’re gonna end up clearing them out anyways. So, if they are, you’re trying one last time with the exit intent popup, they do subscribe, they probably at that point are like, “Okay, I do wanna hear, I was gonna leave and they gave me this offer”. So it’s a subscriber that’s probably gonna wanna open those emails down the line and have some interaction with your business. So it also helps you kinda grow that list around the right types of subscribers which is good and we’ll kick off next time talking about the different types of exit intent forms there are. Thanks everyone for listening, we’ll catch you next time.