Are you ready to dive into the cool technology that swept marketers off their feet?

The Exit Intent Technology

To be honest, ‘technology’ sounds a bit pretentious to me. I mean… it is a technology but its name scares people away because it sounds more complicated than it is. The technology monitors the mouse movements of the people who come to your website. When the mouse cursor makes a swift move towards to upper right corner of the screen, the technology interprets that as an ‘exit intent’. Does it read your mind? No, of course not. What it’s usually in that corner of the screen? Exactly! The ‘close’ button.

When this new technology appeared, those creating web banners and pop-ups could offer marketers a new competitive advantage. Now you could show a message to a visitor when they were about to leave your website, which meant that you had one more shot to convince them to stay or to buy something or to subscribe to your newsletter. All the hard-earned cash you invested in advertising now became more valuable, because thanks to the exit intent technology and exit pop-ups, you could always have one more shot at converting your web traffic into revenue.

The Three Main Rules of Effective Pop-up Use

Pop-ups have a lot more in common with TV ads than we’d like to admit. They’re interruptions. They are, but that doesn’t mean we can’t use them in a smart way that can help us grow our business faster than those people who are too scared to crack a few eggs to make an omelette.

So, how the heck do you use pop-ups like a pro?

1. If you use a pop-up, make sure people see it

What’s the point of using a pop-up that it’s so small or blends into your website’s background so good that people don’t realise it’s there? If you’re going to use a pop-up, make it pop. Neil Patel, the content marketing guru, takes this very seriously. His exit pop-up is something called a ‘page take-over’. It’s huge. It covers the whole damn page. It’s orange. There’s no way you’re going to miss that.

2. Show the pop-up at the right time

In digital marketing, like in everything in life, timing is everything. Setting the right trigger for your pop-up is highly important for its effectiveness. The most popular trigger is time spent on site. If you set your pop-up to appear in the first seconds after the visitor reaches your website, you’re going to scare them off. They’ll think, “well, if I get a pop-up in the first 2 seconds I’m here, how many other will appear if I stay to read this article?”. The best time to pop your message appears to be after 25-35 seconds after the user reaches the website or when they want to leave.

3. Offer something of value

If you interrupt those reading an article or checking out your services, you should do it to offer them something that would make the interruption worth it. And if we’re talking about an exit pop-up, what you’re offering needs to be the best damn thing the visitor could ever imagine getting for free. We should always strive to offer something of value to those visiting our websites and blogs, but when it comes to exit pop-ups we really need to step up our game. Remember that we’re dealing with people who landed on our website, took a quick look and headed for the exit. We’re already on the ‘naughty’ list, so we’d better figure out what would really make them not only to stay but to actually give us money or their email address.

Somebody that does an amazing job at getting those who headed for the exit to subscribe to their newsletter is Lewis Howes. What he does with an exit pop-up is brilliant – he gets you sign up for his email list by offering you a deal you can’t say ‘no’ to; because let’s be honest, you’d prove you’re heartless if you click that close button. He says that he’ll donate $1 toward building a new school in Ghana if you subscribe. It doesn’t cost you anything, on the contrary – you get him to invest in something awesome.

If you’re not sure what to offer, or you just don’t have time to make up your own offers… and don’t want to have to worry about writing email followups, content and promotions you could use our service, Covert Commissions.

Covert Commissions is a fully hosted, done for you email marketing service. Everything from the gifts, squeezepages, download pages and email followups are done and managed for you.

As part of the Covert Commissions membership you also get access to a bonus WordPress plugin, which lets you select a gift, then how you want it to display on your blog.

After a 2 minute set up, you’re ready – there are no emails to write, no code to mess around with… just activate and when people get added to the subscriber list, emails are sent out on your behalf, earning you affiliate commissions for anything your subscribers choose to purchase – forever.

One of the most effective display options is to activate the exit pop function, and when someone goes to leave the page you’ll see your lead capture page load up – all ready to get people on to your fully hosted and managed email list.   It’s total win/win.  You build a list, your visitors get great content, the latest training and free gifts – and recommendations to the hottest software releases as they happen, saving them money and building their businesses … and earning you commissions that compound the more subscribers you add to the system.

Bounce Rate Economics & Exit Pop-ups

I know it looks like I’m going to drag you into a Google Analytics talk you’re just not in the mood for right now, but I’m actually not. I just want to remind you how bounce rates work and you’ll see what that’s got to do with exit pop-ups in a second.

Imagine I’m at my desk and I’m clicking on a link to your website and landing on a blog post you spent 3 days to write. After just four seconds, I see a related post that just sucks me in, so I click on that one, but then I see another link in the first paragraph and I click on that one and the next thing I know is I’m on a Chinese website buying strawberry shaped sunglasses. I’ve spent in total 8 seconds on your website, but because I went to another page and didn’t leave from the one I landed on, the bounce rate, for my visit at least, will be 0%.

Now, imagine Luke, who’s also at his desk, clicking on a link to your website and landing on the same blog post you spent 3 days writing. Unlike me, Luke is actually captivated by the article and he spends 15 minutes reading it all, but as soon as he finishes, he just closes the tab, which means that for this visit the bounce rate is 100%. If we’re your only visitors, you website’s bounce rate is 50%.

When deciding what you’re going to put on your exit pop-up, you need to take a look at your bounce rate and also at the time spent on site for the page where you want to implement the exit pop-up. If 99% of your visitors spend 4 seconds max on a web page, they probably have no idea what you’re selling, who you are, why they should care about what you have to say, but that doesn’t mean you can’t hook them with an enticing offer and attract them in your sales funnel. On the other hand, if people spend a lot of time on the website and your bounce rate is low (<50% is great for most niches) you can assume they understand who you are and what you offer and you know you can push for a conversion.

I’ve mentioned this because I saw many newbies making the same mistake. They only check their bounce rate, they see it’s 85%, they ignore the time spent on site, and they start thinking “since these people bounce, they’re not interested so I really have nothing to lose”. When you think that, you don’t put in the time and effort to come up with an offer that would convert people and you just let good traffic go to waste.

Tell Me What Niche You’re In, and I’ll Tell You What to Offer

You might be wondering who can use exit pop-ups. Well, everyone. Everyone can use exit pop-ups, but the main industries that are using them are those that invest in content marketing and buying quality traffic. They really don’t want to see the traffic they generated go to waste, so they use exit pop-ups as one last shot at getting something out of a visit.

Here are those type of websites and what they use their exit pop-ups for:

A) Content Websites

These are either websites that focus on news from a certain niche or industry or websites collecting reviews, tutorials, opinion pieces focusing on a certain topic. Because they are ideal choices for advertisers looking to engage their exact audience (i.e. people interested in cryptocurrencies, women interested in becoming life coaches, etc.) they want to make sure they capture as many as those visitors as they can on an email list.

What they use exit pop-ups for: collecting email addresses, getting people to like their Facebook page or follow them on Instagram, getting people to watch a sponsored videos or read a sponsored article.

B) Blogs

Bloggers figured out pretty early in the game that the money’s in the list, so they too try to get people to subscribe. It’s always easier to sell a service or a product to those people who subscribed to your newsletter than to those you have to wait for to visit your blog.

What they use exit pop-ups for: getting readers to subscribe to their newsletter or download a freebie in line with the blog’s main theme.

C) E-commerce websites

For retail websites, the exit pop-up is godsent technology. It allows e-Shops to try one more time to get the interested buyer to click that “buy” or “place order” button.

What they use exit pop-ups for: reminding people they have products in their shopping cart, offering visitors a discount, offering visitors free shipping, getting them to subscribe to the newsletter or watching an unboxing video or reading a review – anything e-shop managers can think of to convince the visitors that they should make a purchase.

D) Service websites

If you offer a service is a bit trickier to use exit pop-ups to make a sale, but if you’re creative enough, this little thing can impact your sales. Service websites usually try to get visitors to reach out.

What they use exit pop-ups for: offering people free white papers and guides, getting people to a live chat room where they could ask their questions about the services, convincing people to subscribe to the newsletter.

E) Lead gen pages

Lead generation uses paid traffic very often, so using an effective exit pop-up is highly important. A good exit pop-up can help you stop haemorrhaging money.

What they use exit pop-ups for: collecting phone numbers or email addresses, or getting people to download a freebie or book a call with a sales manager or ask a question using the live chat plug-in or request a discount or get free shipping.

Exit pop-ups are another shot at converting a new visitor who already decided to leave your website, no matter if they came to it from a Google search result or because they saw your ad on Instagram. There are so many ways to use exit pop-ups that the only limit is your imagination, and the technical aspects can’t be an excuse not to do it anymore.

If you’re looking for a flexible pop-up plugin, you can’t go past WP Ultra Pop. With this easy to use plugin you’re about to create your own pop-ups and set your own triggers, for any of the methods we’ve discussed in this post and then a few more.

Check out WP Ultra Pop here, and if you like it and choose to buy through that link you’ll also get these bonuses too! (Delivered automatically in your JVZoo downloads area)

[+] Bonus #1: Generation Z And What It Means For Your Marketing
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[+] Bonus #2: Email List Secrets Step-by-Step Guide
The step-by-step blueprint to building a thriving email list and increase your profits starting today.
[+] Bonus #3: Exit List Pro Software
Easily add powerful exit popups to your web pages – to build your mailing list on autopilot.
[+] Bonus #4:  VidLock Plugin
This WP plugin let’s you capture more profitable leads by ‘locking’ your videos until your visitors perform a certain action, thus enhancing sales.

If, for some reason you don’t see your bonuses in your JVZoo customer portal, contact our support desk with your transaction ID and we’ll get them over to you

I hope this was as painless as I promised and that you’ve enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed typing it up.

Post your comments below to let me know if you’re currently using exit pop-ups, how effective are they for you, and what else I should/could have addressed in this post.