The pop-up prompts for users to submit an email address tend to be most effective around lunch time, a study finds.

Pop-ups can help retailers nearly double the rate at which they sign up consumers to receive marketing email, a study finds.

Retailers that incorporate pop-ups, also known as modal lightboxes, to encourage a shopper to sign up for an email subscription list—often while offering a pot sweetener such as a percentage off of a purchase—grew their email lists by an average of 47.87% year over year, according to a recent report by email marketing firm Listrak, which surveyed more than 400 of its e-retailer customers.

Timing is everything when it comes to reeling in shoppers. Listrak’s data shows that websites have a higher signup rate around lunch time (3.04% of all visitors to websites from 11 a.m.-1 p.m. Eastern time) than when site visitors are just beginning their day (1.71% of visitors from 6-7 a.m. Eastern).

Getting a pop-up in front of consumers quickly and prompting visitors to act to clear the pop-up by providing their email information are hallmarks of a top-performing site. Listrak’s data shows that 66% of the highest-performing websites in terms of email signup among the more than 400 retailers surveyed made visitors close the popup if they didn’t want to see it, while retailers whose pop-up appeared the quickest (within three seconds or less of a visitor landing on a site) tended to perform better than those with pop-ups that appeared later in the session.

“The key to modal lightbox as an effective acquisition tactic relies upon the marketer to fine-tune and optimize the messaging, rules, placement and all other aspects to truly get the most out of this already high-performing solution,” Listrak CEO Ross Kramer said in the report. “No two retailers are exactly alike, and what works for one retailer may not work for every other retailer.”  

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Top500Guide.com data shows that Listrak provides email marketing services to 68 of the Top 1000 online retailers in North America, including 16 in the Internet Retailer 2015 Top 500 Guide and 52 in the Second 500.

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