7 Best Email Capture Softwares for Bloggers

Email marketing is an excellent way to establish ongoing relationships with your blog readers. Email marketing is not a good way to build relationships with your blog audience. It is therefore crucial to learn how to effectively collect email addresses from blog visitors. These are the top seven email capture tools that can help you quickly build your email list.

Your audience will determine the best way to collect email addresses from your blog. Bloggers who are the most successful test a wide range of email capture techniques and tools before narrowing their efforts to the ones that work best for them.

These are the top seven ways to get more email addresses from your blog visitors.

1. Sign Up Forms Embedded

Many top email service providers, such as Constant Email, Mailchimp and ConvertKit, offer bloggers the ability to create custom forms that can embedded directly into their blogs. This allows you to easily capture email addresses from any part of your website.

Each email provider has a different process for embedding sign-up forms. Some providers offer custom WordPress plugins to help you set up forms. Others will assist you in designing a form and give you HTML code so you can place it anywhere on your website.

Constant Contact makes it easy to create several types of email capture forms for your blog, including embedded or inline forms.
(Source: knowledgebase.constantcontact.com)

To collect email addresses for newsletters, e-books, or any other purpose you can use embedded sign-up forms (also called inline). A lead magnet, which is a strategy to increase your email capture success rate, can be offered as a free incentive or gift.

Tip To collect more email addresses, ensure that your embedded sign up form is prominently displayed on your website. It is best to place it "above" the fold, which simply means that it should be visible above the fold so that visitors don't have to scroll.

Example of an embedded email capture form for a newsletter
(Source: bemytravelmuse.com)

2. Pop-ups

Since almost a decade, I have been a blogger. Pop-ups are a great way to get more email addresses. I don't know how many times I've had new bloggers cringe at my suggestion.

Pop-ups are annoying for both bloggers and visitors to blogs. Pop-ups are often a problem for bloggers, who don't want them until they learn how useful they can be. Pop-ups can be used to collect email addresses on blogs if you are serious about making money blogging.

In a study of over 1.7 billion pop-ups, SumoMe found that the average pop-up conversion rate is 3.1% while the top-performing popups convert at 10% (Source: sumo.com)

Pop-ups are best if they provide a great deal of value to visitors. Pop-ups that offer little value are annoying to readers and can detract from your users' experience on your blog.

These are some tips to help your pop-ups perform better

• Align pop-up content to the content that your visitor is reading on the blog page.
• Make your pop-ups clear and concise by using a single call to actions, such as "download the free report."
• You can set a time delay to make pop-ups appear only when the reader exits the page.
• You can schedule pop-ups to make sure they don't show up every time someone visits your blog.
• To make sure that your offer is attractive, test pop-up copy.

The Confessions of Parenting blog uses a pop-up featuring a free gift to capture emails.
(Source: confessionsofparenting.com)

3. Slide-ins

These email capture devices are slide-in, as the name suggests. Although they look similar to pop ups, slide-in boxes are subtler. Slide-ins tend to be smaller than pop ups, which can often take up a lot of screen space. Slide-ins can be scheduled to appear at the time and place you choose on your blog.

HubSpot did a study about slide-ins' effectiveness. The study found that slide-ins had a 192% greater click-through rate (CTR) and generated 27% more submissions compared to other email capture devices.

Although most email service providers offer embedded forms and pop-ups, not all of them offer slide-ins. OptinMonster and MiloTree are just a handful of service providers that offer slide-ins for email capture.

OptinMonster makes it easy to create a slide-in to capture email addresses.
(Source: optinmonster.com)

To make a slide-in effective, follow the same guidelines as pop-ups. To put it another way, ensure that your slide-in's call-to-action is clear and limit how many times your visitors see your slide-ins. You should also offer something of extreme value to your readers so that they will be happy to give you their email address, and not annoyed by the intrusions the slide-in makes.

4. Header bars

It doesn't pay off to be subtle when it comes to email capture. You might consider adding a header bar on your website with the sole purpose of collecting more email addresses.

Your visitors will not be as bothered by sign-up forms displayed in graphic bars located above your blog's head. You can have static header bars that disappear when the visitor scrolls through your blog posts and pages. A sticky bar can be added to your website. This means that the bar does not disappear as visitors scroll through your pages.

To create a header bar on your website, you can use an email capture service provider such as Hello Bar. If your blog theme supports header bars, you can also create one through your email marketing provider.

Example of a header bar on the Plain Chicken blog
(Source: plainchicken.com)

5. Landing Pages

A landingpage is another popular way to capture email addresses. A landing page is simply a blog page that collects user information to provide value to page visitors.

Landing pages let you include more information about your offer that other email capture tools. They are a great tool for marketing and promotion of your blog. Social media is used by many bloggers to promote online courses, resource guide, challenges, or other giveaways. They then direct their followers to landing pages that collect emails.

Example of a landing page for a printable design challenge
(Source: goldcityventures.com)

You can also create landing pages by using a full-service provider like ClickFunnels. You can also make landing pages with solutions like Unbounce, Leadpages, and InstaPage.

Landing page companies specialize in providing templates that are especially effective for collecting email addresses. This means that you can create professional-quality designs in minutes instead of hours. You can make your own landing pages if you have the design skills or budget.

Instapage has simple-to-use templates for landing pages that you can use to create attractive landing pages in minutes. Source: Instapage.com

6. Chat Boxes

Chat software is often added to websites to better serve customers. However, online chats can be used to collect emails from visitors to your site. Online chats are more common for blogs with ecommerce capabilities.

Chat software such as Freshchat or Livechat allows you to send emails through live chats. Chat boxes are not the only way to build your email list. They can be used as a secondary method for collecting emails from engaged blog visitors.

7. Surveys & Quizzes

Another way to increase your email list is to add high-value surveys and quizzes to your blog. Surveys are a great way to gather information about your blog readers so that you can better serve them. Because they provide a way to add value for readers, quizzes are gaining popularity. Your email opt-in rates are likely to rise if your quiz is entertaining and helpful.

Tonic Sites on Tap reports that it generates a 78% email opt-in rate with this quiz.
(Source: tryinteract.com)

Simple surveys can be created using Google Forms, Typform or SurveyMonkey. LeadQuizzes are two popular quiz makers. All of these tools allow you to quickly create quizzes and surveys in minutes.

Tip If you intend to add quizzes on your blog, ensure that the quiz is relevant and targets your target audience. It is a wasteful of time to collect names that won't engage with your blog. Most email providers charge by how many contacts you have.

The link between email capture and blog monetization

A large and well-targeted list of email subscribers is a great way to monetize your blog. Research has shown that email marketing returns an average of 3,800%. If you are serious about making money blogging , you should make use of a variety tools to collect email addresses from your visitors.

With an average ROI of 3,800%, email marketing is a great monetization tool for bloggers. (Source: salesforce.com)

Top Tips to Capture the Most Emails

You now have a good understanding of the best tools to collect email addresses. Now you need to maximize your collection rates using strategies and techniques that will ensure success. Use lead magnets that are attractive to your blog visitors as a way to grow your email list.

The Hello Hayley blog, which focuses on DIY and decluttering, offers a free decluttering and cleaning checklist as a lead magnet. (Source: hello-hayley.com)

Make an irresistible lead magnet

If they don't know what it is for them, people may be reluctant to give their email address. It's a smart idea to offer your blog audience something in return for their email address. Lead magnets are the incentives you offer to increase email capture rates.

There are many types of lead magnets. These include checklists, videos, reports and exclusive videos. The right lead magnet can make it easy to capture email addresses.

Multi-lead magnets are a hallmark of the most successful bloggers. You can build your email list by creating multiple lead magnets and tracking who responds. This will allow you to better segment your list so that you can make more from your email marketing campaigns.

The Modest Money personal investing blog offers its free Beginner’s Guide to Dividend Investing as a lead magnet. (Source: modestmoney.com)

Try Different Lead Capture Tools

There is no one email capture tool that will work best for all blogs. We recommend that you test at least three to five out of the seven best email capture tools. Varietate the copy, layout, images and placement of lead capture tools on your blog to get optimal results.

Timing Your Email Pop-Ups & Slide-Ins Carefully

Avoid using distracting tools to distract your visitors from their work. Time the appearance of email capture attempts carefully. Your visitors should be allowed to browse your website for several seconds without interrupting them. Better yet, schedule your email capture efforts to ensure that pop-ups or slide-ins are only displayed when visitors exit the page.

Example of full-screen exit Intent screen (Source: hellobar.com)

Limit the number of email capture devices on each page

If you try to collect too many emails, it will make you seem pushy or desperate. You should limit your efforts to capture emails on any one page or blog post to two or three attempts. You might have a header bar that captures emails from every page on your blog. You might also include an email capture device in the sidebar of your blog or a pop up that appears when the visitor leaves the page.

Mobile Audience: Don't forget about them

An email capture tool that works well on a desktop computer may not work as well when used by a visitor to a blog. Before you publish your email capture forms live on your website, make sure that you view them on several devices.

Are you unsure if your audience prefers a desktop or mobile device? This information can be easily found by going to your Google Analytics dashboard.

Google Analytics can help you determine the devices used by your blog visitors and optimize your email capture techniques accordingly. Source: googleanalytics.com

Bottom line

Email marketing is one way bloggers make money. It is crucial to have both high volumes and high quality email addresses. Your email efforts will make you more money if you are able to acquire targeted email addresses.

Pop-ups and embedded sign-up forms are the best tools for email capture. You can experiment with various lead magnets and lead-capture tools to get the best results.