Pop-Up Windows: A Nuisance or a Gold Mine?
By Karon Thackston
How many times a day do you see them as you surf the Web? Pop-up and pop-under windows
have become a widely used marketing tool. But do they work? Are they just a nuisance,
or are they really the gold mine that all the "gurus" claim?
After doing a good deal of research, I’ve discovered some pretty interesting facts.
After implementing my own pop-up campaign, I’ve had some enlightening moments. Allow
me to tell you what I’ve discovered, and you can make up your own mind.
I started by looking to one of my favorite marketing research resources,
www.marketingexperiments.com.
They actually spent over $4,000 testing pop-up windows and compiling the results.
Their experiment included using pop-ups for a biweekly ezine publisher and a computer
products retailer.
The results were astounding! The ezine publisher got 100 more subscribers during a
one-week period WITH the pop-up window than WITHOUT. The computer retailer received
over 3,700 new subscribers by using a pop-up window. That was enough to convince me
to look further into using pop-ups on my own sites.
(NOTE: One thing the experiment was careful to point out is that copy plays an
enormous role in the success or failure of the pop-up. I wholeheartedly agree!)
Using my KT & Associates site
as the guinea pig, I added a pop-up window (to show on exit) giving information about
my copywriting course. Then I waited and watched. Success didn’t take long!
While I do not conduct the "controlled" experiments that MarketingExperiments.com does,
I do have some basic data to offer you. After an 11-day period, I checked my site
statistics and was very pleased! I had gotten a number of page views (not "hits" -
"page views") using the pop-up window. I had also seen a 50% conversion rate.
(Meaning that 50% of those who clicked to my copywriting course site purchased the
product.) The pop-up was working great!
What were the factors that made a successful pop-up window? For the folks at
MarketingExperiments.com, it was an offer of some sort. The computer retailer offered
the opportunity to win a prize. The ezine publisher offered the chance to enter a sweepstake.
However, that leads to another issue (that I won’t get into at the moment) of attrition.
After the contest is over, and the prize is awarded, will the subscribers unsubscribe?
For me, I offered something of interest to my visitors. They came to my site seeking
marketing and copywriting information. It made sense that they would be interested
in the course. Viewers never read every single word of your Web site, so the pop-up
window gave me the opportunity to tack a "PS" onto their visits. Sort of stating,
"Oops! You might have missed this. Don’t you want to take a look before you go?"
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